


In Order to Fly, You Need to Leave the Ground

by viviixen



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen, Healing, Im horrible at tagging, Link (Legend of Zelda) Needs a Hug, Link is a little more feral than in game because thats how i like him :), Mentor/Protégé, Selectively Mute Link (Legend of Zelda), T for swearing, TP Link is a good friend, Wolf Link is a Little Shit, and now im addicted, because ive obtained the amiibo, cishet characters? in my fanfiction? absolutely not, i love my ally friends! yall r great! however i dont understand you, implied panic attacks, my crap attempts at humor, this is now a oneshot collection book
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2020-10-04 10:55:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 32,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20469857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viviixen/pseuds/viviixen
Summary: “Can you sniff out treasure too?” The other asked suddenly, an excited lilt to his voice. He spoke differently than the people he’d heard at the stable, he pronounced his L’s harder and rolled his R’s more. It reminded him of pumpkins and circle-horned goats.He missed them.(Or: TP!Link misses home and struggles to let go of the past, and BotW!Link is pure and trying his best)





	1. prologue i

**Author's Note:**

> first work in this fandom!! playing breath of the wild just makes me wanna write introspective stuff, so here’s some not-really-angst-but-kinda-angst 
> 
> pls enjoy!!

It was black, but the light was blinding. It was heavy, but it was a feather, a rasp, a graze when it could have been a touch. It was afraid, but at the same time it chased away the black in the only way white could. White hurt his eyes. At that, something crossed his mind like a shooting star, a thought gasping a new life, rebirthed, reanimated. A newborn’s lungs expanding into the world with a whisper. 

Was black scared?

It was his first thought. It was his millionth thought. 

_ Open... _

It was blue. Curtains fell away to the sky–an eye, a castle, the bottom of a bunk bed, the roof of a quaint home, the roof of something else. Constellations, so many stars, but they glowed robotically in time with his breaths. Air rushed in like he’d been choked, chest rising up, up, up into the mountain peaks and into the valleys and running through the rivers like it can walk on the rapids and surf on nothingness. His body was the land before it even knew it yet, but it's moving and searching for an answer all the same. Something’s missing, something’s not right. 

_ Open your... _

It was wet, but it was not water that impeded his fingers’ ability to move. It stung like medicine, like an angry hornet, like the edge of a sword. It bit and scratched and it resisted. It was a vice, he was trapped like a dog, but he was breathing and he did that purposefully, confidently. It was the only thing he knew how to do as he stared up at the ceiling. He didn't even know how to blink.

_ Open your eyes... _

It was loud, he realized all at once as the liquid drained from his ears and left him alone, cold and shaking and soaked. The air was noisy as it moved in a way it hadn’t in so long, there was a hum but there was no song. 

The water wasn’t gnawing on his bones, grinding them into a paste, chaining him to the floor. It was swaddling him, only differently. In the only way something that smells like water but bites like a dog knows how. He dearly misses it now that it’s gone.

_ Open your eyes! _

He blinked. He knew how to blink now, and the discovery sent a jittery sort of music down into his chest, holding his ribs with mother’s hands and keeping them steady as they rattle. Lips turned upwards, eyelids fluttered, tongue tasted the old, dusty room and it was the most delectable meal. He did it over and over until it turned mundane, and even then it was exhilarating.

He felt new, like a baby, so very precious. Though there was something inexplicably wrong, there was some demented force here. Weren’t people supposed to come from warmth and contact and arrive crying for attention? Weren’t they supposed to be born like an infant instead of awoken like a zombie? 

Sore limbs spilt over the side of the tub, the bed, knobs of his spine angry at being pressed against stone and elbows asleep. 

He didn’t know any of the answers to his questions, but he asked them anyway. No one heard but himself, and he was alright with that. Maybe the black could hear him, though it still hadn’t told him if it was scared of the light or not. 

_ Wake up, Link! _

He pressed those drowsy elbows to the ground and sat up. The sensation of existence is like alcohol and delirium, he was in the clouds but everything got dimmer and dimmer until feet dug into the earth and soles hit hard concrete like raindrops in puddles. A cotton-stuffed head brushed all those artificial stars hanging from a morbid-looking mobile, gone dark. 

Fascinated, he ran numb fingers through sopping hair. He marveled at the feeling of feeling, absorbing everything about himself that he could touch. Hands explored bangs like a labyrinth, clutched the mass of golden locks that tickled his back like an old friend. They gently wandered to pointed ears that flinched back at the notion of touch, they contrasted their harmless roving by tugging on looped jewels stabbed into his lobes. Satisfied with the side of his head, his focus of awe turned to his eyelashes, feeling them kiss the top of his cheeks, uncut and overgrown. There was moss holding one side of his face, but further investigation revealed that it was just a rough spot of skin, as ordinary as the darkness. 

Thumbs circled the indent over his heart, a great crater in his chest, and that moss continued all the way down. He was a tree. 

He wondered what trees looked like. Were they big or small? 

Orange dotted the walls like freckles, and he brought his hands away from his body to examine them. He had little bits of orange too, though maybe not vivid like the stars. More like imperfections. 

_ Link.  _

Inquisitive eyes turned upwards, pupils dilated. 

_ Link.  _

He sounded that out with his mouth, tongue like a mace in his throat. He felt that, felt the way his neck bobbed with a swallow. Again he tasted the name, smiling when flesh moved under his fingertips. 

Something lit up. It flared like a spark, like a sun! It was blue and filled the dark room with light that the stars had given up on, once again scaring away the shadows. Knees buckled at the sight, he wobbled and swayed and tried again and again until he remembered how to walk. His toes dug into the floor at that, adrenaline pumping, but still he held his hands in front of the azure glow simply because he wanted to see what pale skin would look like with a little light. 

Responding to that slightest movement, a rectangle came to life and twirled with a whirr in the pedestal. Facing him was something glass, but not transparent. It was as opaque as any stone. Curious, he placed soft hands around it and tugged it upwards away from the grasp of its resting place. It blinked, a strange eye opening and crying a perfectly symmetrical tear, and washed his face with brightness. It wasn’t a misty spray, like the serene glow of the identical eye on its back, it was a straight blade that seemed to scan him. Authentication complete, the screen returned to darkness.

_ That is a Sheikah Slate,  _ the voice said, and only now did he deign to pay it any attention. She sounded tired but hopeful, like she was afraid to be so optimistic.  _ Take it. It will guide you on your journey. _

He tilted his head to the side, hair slapping against his forehead, and turned the Slate every which way. Long nails scratched at it for some hidden compartment, the slate had something useful, apparently. A sword? 

He didn’t question how he knew what a sword was, but it felt important. 

_ Hold it up to the pedestal,  _ the woman instructed patiently after he had thoroughly examined the thing like a cautious animal. He obeyed immediately, some hidden instinct warning him of danger should he ignore her any longer. 

On the pedestal lit up an eye, the same sign on the Slate, and dust fell from the ceiling. The ground rumbled, only slightly, but enough to throw his unstable body to the ground again. The Slate dinged, and runes appeared in neon on the Slate when he held it up to eye level to check.

_ Authenticating,  _ the woman read out to him. He mouthed the words, eyes wide and unblinking. One by one, the strange long bricks of the wall in front of him folded inwards and fell away. 

The air left the chamber all at once, like an airlock had been pulled, and his hair followed suit. It was almost burningly hot, and he felt the wet mop on his head dry instantly at the blast. It tugged him forwards, the whiteness, but one hand lingered in that room for a little bit longer, almost as if some part of him was reluctant.

He turned back, eyes trained on the tub he’d been laying in but a minute ago, and was almost mournful to see the once vibrant blue lights completely dark. Dead and gone, served some purpose and now no longer useful.

Maybe the blackness would be fine by itself, he amended, and stepped forwards. With his vision trained to the bright environment, now, he could see that the blinding light was filtering out of a pile of rocks that sat in front of the arched doorway. Something had caved in the chamber and sealed it in. Sealed it in with him inside.

His hair stood straight, and now every desire to stay in that small room was gone. With the Slate under his armpit, tucked in as securely as he could without a belt, he scrambled for purchase. Only a couple times did rocks give out under him, even though it wasn’t a very tall climb. Soon, though, finding invisible handholds and digging bare feet into sharp stone was almost second nature; it certainly came easier than walking. 

He paused once he reached the gap between the roof and the rocks, and carefully shoved the Slate through the gap before him. His ears twitched when he heard something hit the ground–ground that sounded soft! Could the ground even be soft?–and he nearly reached up to touch them with a small gasp had he not wobbled on the loose stones. He just barely fit himself through the hole, having to twist his spine strangely to tug his hips from the confines of the earth. Just like the Slate, he tumbled from the entrance with a small grunt, and he tenderly felt the scratches and scrapes all on his waist and legs with a frown when the dizziness stood aside. 

He snatched up the Slate, almost protective over the stupid thing, and his hands brushed something silky and wet. 

_ Grass,  _ the same woman told him, and he imagined a small smile was gracing her surely beautiful lips.

“Grass,” he repeated, feeling the green shoots with obvious awe. He sucked in sweet air, so much sweeter than that of the chamber, and coughed violently. Hands circled his throat, forehead dropped against the ground, but he still echoed the word. “Grass,” he tried again, feeling the same tickle that caused him to hack. “Grass, grass, grass.” 

With watery eyes he looked up, fingers once again trying to memorize the slope of every individual blade, and there was so  _ much of it– _

It stretched for ages, out of his eyesight, over the horizon. There were hills of it, hills surely not made out of only grass, hills bordered by forests with as many trees as there were grass. So many trees, and those were trees he knew, flourishing and stretching like a beautiful sort of rash against the plains. Rivers sparkled under the watchful gaze of the new sunrise. It painted the landscape in gorgeous pink and orange, only interrupted by red clouds dotting the sky. Erupting from the right was an angry mountain, full of glowing orange like the stars in his chamber, and he wondered if the middle sported a tub too. Perhaps a tub with the same sort of warm blue liquid, if the smoke rising from the center told him anything.

It was loud out here, but instead of the silent, eerie kind of noise that he’d emerged from, it was ambient and wonderful. Little creatures chirped and scuttled in the trees below him, trees which he leaned over the cliffside to watch with unblinking cobalt eyes.  _ Birds,  _ she helpfully identified.  _ And squirrels. _

Everything was so beautiful that it took his lungs nearly a minute to catch up, and something primal swirled within him at the sight of it. He felt like a mother, a father perhaps, watching a child bloom with fantasy. Proud and fiercely protective over this land he’d been born into. 

_ Hyrule.  _ Happiness dripped from the woman in his head, who was flickering between presence and absence like she was strained and distracted. 

The ground below him almost mourned the loss of his knees against it, but his feet felt at home naked against the dirt. “Hyrule,” he whispered adoringly. “I-it’s pretty.”

That didn’t do it nearly enough justice, but it was all he could say in the face of emotions like his.

_ Yes, Link. _

Link smiled, pressing questioning fingers into his cheeks at the expression. “And so big.”

_ It is yours. Protect it. _

From what?

As if answering his question, metal against metal clicked, and his gaze shot to the source of the noise. Two pinpricks of teal met his sapphire from under heavyset white brows and a patched hood.

_ Everything. But let it also help. It is not fragile, only precious. _

Heeding her advice, he took a stick from the ground and ventured forwards. Indeed, his feet molded to the shape of the grass like a puzzle piece into the correct hole, and the cuts that surely lined the delicate skin of his soles didn’t bother him a bit as he wandered down broken steps to where the old man sat by a fire.

Why he could not talk out loud to the man, Link didn’t know, but he did feel grateful for his permission to use the woodcutter's axe stuck into a log next to his camp, which felt familiar when held like a weapon in his hands, and for allowing him to take shelter with him while he fidgeted with the Sheikah Slate. 

Perhaps his muteness had something to do with how the man didn’t cast a shadow when he occasionally got up to stretch, or how he looked at him sadly like he knew something Link didn’t. Especially when he wolfed down five baked apples in the span of seconds. It wasn’t surprising that he might know more than Link, though, because he did only learn what grass was a couple minutes ago. 

For all he was happy to let his skin breathe in Hyrule’s wonderful air, he was happy when the Slate gave him a worn shirt, pants, and a multitude of different belts and bobbles that he looped around his shoulder and hips with some difficulty. Inside the menu of the Slate he’d managed to access by pure happenstance, there was also an image of a quiver. He clicked on it, and one materialized from thin air with a flomp on the ground. It left an identical menu in its wake, with a blank title instead of the runes that previously read  _ inventory.  _

He bit his lip, and slowly typed out  _ arrows  _ in the space before fitting the quiver against his back. Arrows were supposed to go in a quiver, and there was a strange sensation of string against the crease of his fingers if he thought about it too hard.

The old man didn’t comment on Link pulling objects from thin air, nor did he answer when Link asked with his hands–motions that came second nature to him–who he was. Both of them, who both of them were. 

_ You are the light,  _ the woman responded strongly. He nearly fumbled with the Slate when she spoke the solitude without her.  _ Hyrule’s light. My light.  _

_ But I’m Link,  _ he said back, though with a measure of uncertainty. She had called him that, hadn’t she?

_ Indeed you are. But you can also be Hope at the same time.  _

Some buried part of him remembered the job of Hope being a heavy burden, and when the old man pointed him towards the dilapidated remains of some grand place called the Temple of Time where a behemoth statue of an angel rested, his steps felt like they were five times as loud. 

He hoped the winged woman didn’t think bad of him for washing off flakes of purple boko blood with the muddy water under her image or for the bodies of said hog grotesqueries that he’d dragged respectfully outside of her home. They smelled bad, as any dead body was wrought to do, but maybe she didn’t mind.

Of course she didn’t mind, he scoffed at himself upon further investigation, because she felt and smelled and tasted like stone. And even if she did, she would certainly take more issue with him licking her out of sheer curiosity than she would corpses of enemies. He still had splinters in his hand when the branch he’d taken from the trees shattered completely in his grip while fighting them.

It was before that same woman, Hylia, that he prayed for strength and resilience with a paraglider tucked safely in the Sheikah Slate.. His skin was frostbitten and his hair was frozen but the dire truth that pressed into his mind left him the most numb, despite his recent trek up a mountain by the same name as the goddess.

Link wasn’t sure if he was apologizing to her or King Rhoam Bosphoramus Hyrule when he vowed before the foot of the statue to never return to the Temple of Time, but Hylia was kind to him nonetheless.

_ Go forth and bring Peace,  _ she told him, and she sounded so much older than the girl who had begged him to open his eyes. The girl, Princess Zelda surely, who had left him in utter silence after she told him that he had died protecting her. Someone who he didn’t remember, because his first memory was a fear of the dark. Fear not because he couldn’t see, but because he was afraid that the darkness itself would be lonely if he sought out the light. 

He felt terrible for the small sliver of resentment he felt towards the Princess, but that was quickly forgotten, as was the name of the mountain.

The Shrine of Resurrection housed his tomb, the Temple sheltered yet another dead body, though this one was invisible, and the Great Plateau granted him the bravery and trust in his paraglider to leap from the walls and sail down. 

Link never wanted to come back. It was the only part of Hyrule that he could bring himself to hate, will himself to forget, but it seemed no matter how terrible his memory proved to be that Zelda and Rhoam were not names Hylia would allow him to lose. 

So he replaced it. 

Wolfie was a tad uncreative, but it would have to do. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a weird addition to the prologue and im sorry lmao. the story just felt weird and incomplete with only part ii and i was in a mood :') good chance to shamelessly plug, tho
> 
> tumblr ---> @viviixen <--- go yell at me sometimes i get lonely


	2. prologue ii

He arrived at the split peaks halfway through the night, the waning crescent moon high over his head and bright. The stars were particularly quiet tonight, they didn’t gossip and blink like any other. 

He laid to rest near the stable, used to being perceived as merely just a beast. It wasn’t a bother to him, but in times like these he missed talking to someone. Talking to anyone. He knew that wasn’t possible, though. He was grateful for this second chance after all. 

The other arrived just at dawn break, sun peeking between the twin spires. The half-mountain looked so massive compared to him, but he rode his steed with confidence, if a little white knuckled. A surge of sympathy stabbed him, he remembered an old role model remarking sadly on how he seemed to grow younger and younger each turn of the Cycle. How right he’d been. He hoped to Her that this was the end of the fight, even his wild soul grew tired of waiting for the peace. 

The other dismounted and lead his untamed mount to the stable with gentleness, and he could tell that his limbs were heavy. He stood, exhaling through his canines. 

His ear twitched, and familiar blue eyes met his curiously. The other was fresh faced and bright, and he couldn’t help but feel a wave of nostalgia. How long had it been since he could look in a mirror and recognize himself in it? 

The other’s hand left his horse’s mane, and he waved a goodbye to the stablehand before approaching the shadows underneath the cliff carefully. He had never done well in the sunlight. 

He lowered his head, knowing that his large fangs and inky mane must be intimidating to someone from a world with such small animals. He shifted his weight to lay down, huffing.

The other reached out a pale, shaky palm. His other hand went to hover over a device on his hip, attached by a hooked belt. 

He wetted his lips with his tongue and jerked back his hand when he moved. He understood the hesitation, looking over your shoulder constantly near instantly became a habit that was hard to shake. 

He wagged his tail back and forth, trying his best to look approachable and friendly. His time in this form was mostly spent hunting or intimidating, he wasn’t used to trying to befriend someone who wasn’t eager to do so in the first place. Stray cats and bushy tailed forest squirrels didn’t count, those tree rats were chatterboxes. 

The other’s face lit up, and he couldn’t help but internally sigh at the naivety. The other’s nose wrinkled when he ran calloused hands through his thick fur, smiling at the coarse fluffiness. 

“Wolfie,” he said quietly. “Yeah? Can I call you Wolfie?” 

He blinked, tail thumping against the ground, and nodded. 

The other didn’t seem too perturbed by his unusual intelligence, just grinning at the fact that he’d made a new friend. “You’re a big Wolfie. A lot bigger than the dog at the stable.” 

He unconsciously leaned into the hand behind his ears, and if he was in any state but this he would be embarrassed by acting like a domesticated canine. He was a regal beast! 

“Can you sniff out treasure too?” The other asked suddenly, and excited lilt to his voice. He spoke differently than the people he’d heard at the stable, he pronounced his L’s harder and rolled his R’s more. It reminded him of pumpkins and circle-horned goats. 

He missed them. 

He tried what he thought would come off as a shrug. The other laughed. “Can you come with me, Wolfie? It gets a little lonely on the road, and Epona won’t talk to me.”  He hadn’t heard that name in a very long time. 

He supposed that he should get used to conversing with this new Epona, with a more gruff voice and a blunter way of speech. She lacked her black nose but her attitude was the same as so long ago. 

If wolves could cry, he did that night, sitting in front of the cave next to the extinguished cook pot. 

_You remind me of someone,_ Epona had told him. _Someone familiar._

_I suppose I would,_ he said back, a barely-concealed lament to his bark. _Rest, I’ll keep watch tonight. You’ve been running the whole day._

He talked to the stars and the shadows until the moon disappeared behind the split peaks, half expecting an imp’s voice to respond to his wonderings.

The other awoke just before the sun broke the horizon, and just like the day before, they were off. 

Sometimes he would disappear in black-orange mounds, sometimes he would leave them to scale a cliff. He prayed to the Goddess Statues often, hands clasped and whispering words underneath his breath. Even during storms a ray of light always seemed to find him. All he could do was curse the Goddess’s image, feeling like he could see her sad smile from the Sacred Realm. 

She hadn’t wanted to start this never ending loop, but she made no effort to end it, only damning her blood to do war with malevolent gods forever. He dared her to descend from the clouds and fix the Cycle, but she remained close-lipped and silent. Not a word reached his wolf ears.

He couldn’t help but feel proven wrong when they scaled to the top of Lanayru mountain. Past the terrifying lynel and frozen lizalfo lied a corrupted spirit, coiled on the peak of the mountain like an injured keeper. 

Naydra.

He apologized to the Goddess Statue in the spring, making sure to support the other with his body. His arms were sore from soaring, and his lungs had yet to catch up with the frigid air. 

They slept in the chamber of the shrine, where it was warm. He wouldn’t let the other trek back down the slope of the mountain, through inches of snow and ice, without a rest. He had dispelled a dragon’s corruption, he deserved to sleep that night. He let the golden-haired boy rest his head on his large body and curl up into his fur. He rested his tail over him, digging his hood out of his bag and laying it over him like a blanket. Cold was not unfamiliar to him, but that didn’t mean that it was pleasant. He knew the dangerous of hypothermia all too well. So he made sure that the other was the right shade of pink and kept him warm, despite the blizzard that raged just outside the cave entrance. 

Naydra returned at exactly midnight, and flew her course down the snowy path. He felt safer with her there. He didn’t question how he knew that she was a her.

* * *

He felt like he was betraying the boy when the other told him that he couldn’t wander into Hateno Village, that they wouldn’t be as understanding as the Sheikah in Kakariko. A Kakariko that was different than the Eldin spring and the towering volcano and the bridge that he’d almost killed a king on.

He rested his chin on his paws and listened for anything, everything, until he could hear Epona’s impatient hooves and the other’s nearly inaudible chattering. 

The first thing he did was take a picture of him with the newly-found camera. He showed him with an excited smile on his face and explained it to him. He didn’t have a heart to disapprove of all the times they stopped so that he could capture a flower or a pretty sunset.

The other was happier when he was there.He thought that was the least he could do, for a boy out of his time and forced into fighting a destiny that he should’ve had an army for. 

The other’s lack of memories didn’t seem to phase him, he only wore a sad smile when Impa gave him the blue embroidered tunic. His body was a century old but his young mind was a blank slate. It didn’t bother the other as much as it bothered himself. 

When asked about it by the shy Kakariko girl, Paya, he just bit his lip and shrugged. He told him later that day that he’d rather make new memories with people that were alive than remember old ones with those he’d never get back. He knew that was only a half-truth, that someone else clogged his throat.

He yearned to tell the other about a dark mirror shattering, glass chips blowing away on artificial wind. He understood, he understood so much. 

But he was mute, and he just set his head in the other boy’s lap and let him stroke his fur until the watery sheen to his sapphire eyes disappeared.

“Thanks, Wolfie,” the other boy whispered, voice hoarse and fingers twitchy. “You’re a really good friend.”

_I’m glad, Link, _he replied in his dog voice. He knew the boy couldn’t understand him, but it felt nice to say his name anyways. 

This time he didn’t yearn for a Hyrule eons past where he donned that same name and that same face, and just breathed out warm air. He smiled his wolffish, wild smile and relaxed into the ear-scratches. Tonight, he was no longer a twilight hero in a beast’s body, he was just a really good friend. 

He could be happy like that. He could learn to adapt to the role of mentor, of support. He could be the Hero’s Shade. 

The stars blinked with silver, all-seeing eyes down at him, and Wolfie slept.


	3. the road to zora's domain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I GOT THE AMIIBO YEEHAW BRETHREN

Zora’s Domain was not underwater, Wolfie soon realized. There was no frozen lake or teal blue flames that revealed scaly, finned, and frightened citizens when sniffed at. Wolfie could scent the salt and rain even from the bottom of the Lanayru Tower, he was sure Link’s nose could pick it out from atop it where the wind was stronger. 

It  _ might  _ be underwater soon, he remedied. There was so much rain, the land was practically flooded. 

The wild hero, to an unfamiliar eye, seemed to have no issue in the midst of sparse but lively towns and crowded stables. To Wolfie’s veteran gaze, however, it was clear that he was often left confused and uncomfortable, wondering what the different nuances of speech and facial expression meant. He did much better in the wilderness and took an almost animalistic liking to it in a way that he learned from Wolfie, which was why he was so confident that he could taste the scent of the storm on the air.

Link could hold his own in those more civilized environments, yes, and often said that they were a welcome reprieve from the harsh treks across unforgiving terrain, but claustrophobia was a prevalent concern that left his head reeling and his tongue mute. Wolfie knew well the way his chest’s rises and falls would quicken, and his ears would flatten against his head. It was the same reaction he had in his Hylian form when he was too high in the air.

He had been strangely happy to lay his hookshots to rest after his journey, and in the rare scenario when it was needed Wolfie distinctly remembered vomiting on Shad’s polished shoes. Which was why he, somewhat guiltily, ignored Link’s sharply whistled request for him to warp on top of the Sheikah Tower and accompany him in listening to the Zora trapped on top give directions. 

No matter, he could easily find him once his feet were rested on damp grass after paragliding towards a Shrine in the area. Link smiled when he greeted him with a yip, and eagerly patted him and thumbed the markings on his forehead. 

_ Spirit orb,  _ he signed, pointing towards the Shrine, and fingerspelled out the Monk’s name carefully.  _ S O H K O F I.  _ He then asked him to wait with a tilted head. 

Wolfie nodded, sitting on his haunches and thumping his tail against the grass. 

Link gave him a goodbye ruffle, accompanied by a playful, well-meaning growl that he’d learned to mimic. The great Twilit beast responded in kind, nudged him with a greyed muzzle towards the door, and quickly moved to sit under a stray leafed branch for cover from the downpour. 

The hero emerged with winded hair that immediately matted against his forehead in the rain and a new bow that was heavily armored and painted a calming blue, though the artistry had somewhat chipped from age. It was similar to the knight’s bows found in the present, and the Sheikah Tech Slate identified it as such, so it disappeared with a neon shimmer in the air. 

Wolfie bestowed Link the hearty radish he’d dug up behind the Shrine, and that too was absorbed into the tablet with a flash of blue. Link affectionately asked him if he needed to clean the dog germs off of it, his throat no longer closed from the unexpected social interaction on top of the Tower. Wolfie huffed and smacked him with his great furry tail. He was not a common dog!

“Let’s follow the path this time,” Link said, bending down to show Wolfie the digital map. He pointed a calloused finger at the winding road, grinning. “It passes through some trees. We could restock on supplies there. There has to be a couple mushrooms, right?” 

Wolfie studied the map, occasionally drawing back so Link could wipe fat raindrops off the screen, and then looked up at the boy in consideration. It was a silent question in the form of a twitch with two fluffy ears and a sniff with a wet nose.

“No, I will not make you try silent shrooms again,” the accused hero acquiesced with a reluctant sigh. “Though it would help if you tried to avoid branches this time.” 

The words were said lightheartedly, a learned tone through careful examination of the interactions between the Sheikah in Kakariko. The hole in Link’s head hadn’t impacted most of his muscle memory–knowledge on how to operate a cooking pot plus a bonus of a few memorized recipes, exceptional skill with weapons of most kinds, and a love for horses that Wolfie could definitely understand were among the few that remained–but obviously, even before this terrible Calamity had hit, Link had not conversed much. Which meant that his knowledge of social interactions was… lacking. To put it nicely. 

As such, the wince that followed that last sentence was noticeable. 

Wolfie still felt absolutely awful about the incident near Rikoka Hills, the incident he was alluding to. The experience had shown itself in the form of multiple night terrors since then.

Needless to say, Link’s Sheikah Slate had caught wind of a Shrine in the middle of the few islands sprouting up from a boggy swamp. A quick glance around them located it, and they were excited at the prospect of a third Spirit Orb. What they didn’t expect was the Guardian inhabiting Bannan Island, spidery legs eerily quiet and hulking mechanical form gone unnoticed until Wolfie had cracked a huge branch chasing a flock of blue-winged heron in the shallow water. 

Wolfie had howled urgently at Link, who looked up immediately at that horrifying sound of warning and the whirr of the Stalker. A red dot was centered squarely in his chest, blinking rapidly, and the Sheikah Slate had fallen in the water from numb fingers with a loud splash. 

Link froze, limbs locked in stasis, and Wolfie just barely dragged him out of the way of a searing blast that shattered the trees behind where the hero had just stood. The Sheikah Slate was quickly retrieved, and they were off like a shot. 

He never knew that his paws could carry him so fast. 

When the shock wore off something had taken over the young boy, and his hands quaked and his sapphire eyes flooded with silver liquid. For the first time, Wolfie saw him openly, uncontrollably weep, his lungs struggling to keep up with desperate breaths he was gulping in. 

Wolfie had stayed with him the entire time, caring not that his magnificent coat was smeared with snot and tears. He licked at the scar tissue that enveloped the left side of Link’s jaw and held him close with large paws until he soothed himself to sleep. 

Kakariko was not so far, and Wolfie thought that the poor boy deserved a warm blanketed bed that night rather than the cold dirt, so he carried him there himself. 

Impa had welcomed them with a mournful gaze and a sad smile, looking down on the wolf-turned-steed from her perch, and told him in her waning voice that Link would be just fine by morning. 

Wolfie knew he would be okay, but it was nice to hear all the same. 

After the next day, they had returned to Bannan Island with twice as many fire arrows and a vengeance. Wolfie gladly let Link steal the final blow, vicious sickle ruthlessly plunged into the robotic eye. Birds flew from both of their victory howls, and rain started once Link entered Daka Tuss’ Shrine as if summoned by Hylia to set out the alit shrubbery from a few misplaced arrows. 

They both knew that the Guardian would return with the next red moon, but it was a major accomplishment to Link, so Wolfie let himself share in the relieved joy that day. Even if his nightmares frequently visited a different scenario where one of them celebrated alone. 

Returned from the recollection, he nodded enthusiastically and pressed his hide to the hero’s hip. The other absentmindedly stroked his voluminous mane that was slowly turning tangled and smelly in the storm. “I don’t blame you for that, you know,” he said. Wolfie simply leaped down the small hill that the Shrine was placed snugly on and waited for Link to follow.

It was his divine duty to keep this wild hero safe, and though he had a thorough detestation for the golden goddess that had yet to fully disappear even after watching Naydra soar through the air, he had every intention of fulfilling that duty in all its forms. It shook him to his very core to even think of failing. 

But Link was here, happily humming along to a song only he could hear despite Wolfie’s superior hearing, and uprooting the different herbs and mushrooms he found as they ventured towards the looming blue pillars that marked Inogo Bridge. Very much alive and well. Wolfie shook the harrowing experience from his mind, it was no use dwelling on it. They had a Beast to conquer and woods to explore. 

Inogo was very close to the Shrine, and he suspected Soh Kofi had placed the orange mound there purposefully. Nonetheless, Link managed to find an array of ingredients in the little time it spent traveling to the bridge, which he gleefully rambled about to Wolfie. 

“Tonight we can have a meat and rice bowl,” he exclaimed with a wide smile, excited at the prospect of a warm, protein-packed meal. They’d been thriving off of the pumpkins and carrots from Kakariko for the last couple days, and though Wolfie could never get tired of pumpkins even if he ate them every day for the rest of his life, his canine stomach was beginning to get a little sick of all the vegetables. “The rice might take a little to prepare, but Zora’s Domain must be safe to be so large. And decorated.”

Decorated, indeed. The bridge was elaborate and shone in the sparse sunlight a similar hue to the Hylian hero’s own eyes. Luminous stones, grey in the day but a brilliant teal once night soon fell, adorned the pristine arches of the building.

Wolfie’s ears perked up, and his eyes shot to a wide arch linking the two spires. Link followed his gaze. Wolfie’s attention was rewarded with a glimpse of red and a zealous call. 

“Hey there! Young one!” a distinguished voice greeted from the arch, where the speaker remained hidden for just a bit before dramatically leaping off and landing with a flip. 

Wolfie wasn’t sure what he expected, but it certainly was not a shark man that towered over both of them. Wolfie reached Link’s ribcage when his hackles were raised, and Link wouldn’t even reach this Zora’s elbows. That, accompanied by a striking red color and a head crested with jewels that could only be an indicator of royalty made this figure imposing.

The teeth did not help. 

Wolfie leaned into Link when he tightly grasped a handful of his mane, neck craning to look up at the large man. He lowered his nose at the Zora so he could keep a watchful eye on him, protectiveness surging alongside Link’s anxiety.

“Pardon the entrance,” the red Zora apologized sincerely when he saw the wide-eyed look in the hero’s eyes. “But you’re a Hylian, aren’t you? I was hoping we’d have a moment to talk!”

_ He couldn’t be a Zora,  _ Wolfie huffed silently.  _ Are you blind? _

Link just pointed at himself, hesitated for a second, and nodded. 

The Zora sucked in a breath, spreading his arms wide animatedly and showing off a side marked with fanning gills as well as a myriad of other expensive ornaments that rivaled the pompous-seeming feather on his head.

Wolfie felt like he was judging too harshly, but sue him for having trust issues. 

“Aha!” the man assumed a more relaxed posture, but still continued to gesture wildly as he talked. “A Hylian! Yes! I knew it.” 

He seemed very excited to see someone with pointed ears, he thought. Why, though? Link seemed to share his wonders, eyes no longer darting to find a route of escape but still a bit tense nonetheless. His nerves weren’t easing Wolfie’s distrust. 

“Oh,” the Zora reached out a clawed hand, almost as if attempting to soothe Link and his wolf companion. “Excuse me, where are my manners? I am Sidon!” 

Wolfie’s lip twitched in amusement when Link only gave Sidon a blank stare, the name not stirring a response. 

The scarlet Zora just smiled a pearly smile full of sharp teeth and displayed a toned arm. “The Zora prince!” he explained further, and then Link’s eyes gave away to recognition.

_ A memory?  _ Wolfie thought, but no. Link just acknowledged the title and went to bow with a knee digging into the muddy ground, head down. 

Prince Sidon seemed appalled at the gesture of formality, and stopped him midway. “No need, friend! I don’t even know your name.” 

At this exchange, Wolfie watched intently. Link’s version of Hylian sign was mostly forgotten in this world, it seemed. He thought it had to do with the kind of people who had survived the Calamity; one look at the castle told him that not a lot of upperclassmen made it out. And upperclassmen were usually the ones who learned seemingly nonessential languages like HSL. 

_ My name L I N K,  _ the hero told him, and then pointed at himself. Then, he gestured to Wolfie, and gave him a kind scratch behind his wet ears. He could see Link’s nose wrinkle at the smell of wet dog, and if wolves could smile then there was a shit-eating one on his muzzle.  _ This W O L F I E.  _

It was strange seeing his name letter by letter. Link had never introduced him by name to other people. It had never been necessary. But when he spoke directly to him it had always been verbally or with a sign that combined the tap against the skull of  _ moon  _ and the locking index fingers in front of one’s chest of  _ friend,  _ resulting in something that looked something similar to  _ brother _ but was not nor was purposefully meant to be. 

Wolfie loved that sign. 

He thought Sidon would reward Link’s slow, methodical fingerspelling with a confused glance and more loud talking, but to Wolfie’s surprise he nodded with a glitter in his golden eyes. 

The Zora bent down to look the great beast in the eyes, showed his sharky teeth friendly, and said “Pleased to meet you, Wolfie.” He stood, “And you as well, Link! Oh, Link is a fantastic name. Though I cannot shake the feeling that I’ve heard it before…”

The hero’s hands returned to grasping his mane in a fist. He was sure that the leg of his trousers was soaked through from being pressed against absorbent fur, but Link didn’t seem to mind or care. He merely sought readily given comfort. 

Sidon continued. “Well, in any case, it is a mighty name!”

Link shrugged and made a so-so gesture, even as Siden raved on. Wolfie stepped on his toes with a paw, which made him pull a funny face that was quickly hidden when the prince looked down at them again.

“To be honest, Link, I’ve been watching you.” 

Wolfie’s companion went a little pale, and the canine’s upper lip raised in a half snarl that gave Sidon pause and made him choose his next words carefully. “I’ve seen the way you work. From the way you carry yourself I can tell that you are no ordinary person, and your friend no ordinary wolf! You must be a great Hylian warrior, yes?” 

Again, Link made an in-between motion with hunched shoulders. Wolfie just wished that Sidon would blink a little. The Zora was not unkind, but to someone so blatantly unused to civilization–and if Sidon had been watching Link long enough to deduce a measure of skill, he should have also noticed these signs–his exuberant behavior was a little baffling and overwhelming. Wolfie didn’t begrudge him this. It was just odd. 

“Do not sell yourself short, friend. I am a Zora prince, and as such I have an eye for talent that is unparalleled!” Sidon leaned in close to study the object of his excitement, hands balled into almost childish fists. “Yes! You are exquisite, I can tell. I have been searching for someone like you for a long while, someone who holds himself with power!”

Link kept the distance even by leaning back with a slight flinch caused by those quick, thrilled movements.  _ What you need?  _

“Well, right now Zora’s Domain is in grave danger because of the massive rainfall coming from Divine Beast Vah Ruta.” 

Link’s eyes lit up. He glanced at Wolfie with a knowing look. The beast’s tail wagged, and Link responded to Sidon’s plea for assistance in ridding the region of the artificial storm with a definite  _ yes.  _

A peal of thunder and a flash of lightning sent them on the trail and Sidon into the river with a flourish. Wolfie’s ears were pricked and his fur was standing on his spine, alert. His shackle, which he’d never been able to remove for the metal was something otherworldly, felt alive, and it caused frantic haste in both of the heroes. When the storm raged, they sat under the cover of a tall boulder and Link would throw a metal sword into the air so the lightning would fry that instead of them. 

Wolfie was irate to sit on the sidelines while Link took care of the lizalfo with yellow arrows, a weapon that the boy showed him with an awed expression. He’d stolen everything he could from these monsters, both of them having the feeling that electricity was important. Even golden zapshrooms shone in the thunderstorm, nestled right against trees. 

Link forced a bitterly disgusting shock resistance potion down Wolfie’s throat the minute they were able to set the sparse firewood under a stray cookpot alight, and waved off the wolf’s hum of concern that he’d just used all of his zapshrooms. 

When Sidon popped his head out of the water, voice laced with worry and encouragement, Wolfie was definitely going to smack him with a branch. He understood that Zora were vulnerable to the sizzle of shock arrows, but that didn’t mean he wanted to watch Link patch up that nasty, boiling bite that an electric keese had landed on his shoulder.

Wolfie didn’t care if his shackle was a conduit for lightning, he killed that one himself. 

“Stop that,” Link had admonished lightly with a kind bump to his head. He looked up at him, as if asking what he’d done. “He doesn’t need to know you don’t like him. I think he’s nice.” He must’ve made a face at that, because Link’s laugh was hearty and breathtaking. 

The merry noise disappeared when they checked the Slate and learned that Oren Bridge was only halfway to Zora’s Domain. 

* * *

It was his second shock-resistance elixir this journey, and while the taste was nowhere near rivaling the sweetness of the red potions in his own Hyrule, it wasn’t nearly as disgusting the second time around. His fur puffed out like he’d been zapped in response to the potion’s effects. Link chortled and smoothed it down with the rain for him. 

Wolfie whined and nudged the empty bottle more firmly into the hero’s hand with a displeased expression. 

“I’m not a conductor, Wolfie,” Link said. His voice betrayed the want to sign, slightly quivering and nervous, but night had fallen on the road and the blue luminous stone lanterns were the only source of light other than the sporadic, blinding flashes of lightning. Even with his trained eyes, he wouldn’t be able to see the signs.

_ I know,  _ Wolfie relented with an animalistic huff.  _ But you could be more careful. _

They were sat under one of the spires on Luto’s Crossing, and while the brim of the spearheaded pillar sheltered them somewhat from the rain, Wolfie’s Twilit shackle would eventually draw the ire of the storm. 

Unknown to his companion’s commentary, Link continued his quiet musing. “He said there would be more powerful enemies on the other side of Oren Bridge, but so far it’s just been more lizalfo.” His tone betrayed a cautious wonder. 

The lizalfo were ruthless and fast, they could keep up with Link and dodge Wolfie’s strikes, even with the aid of his little remaining shadow magic. A certain step up from dumb but hardy bokoblins, and below moblins similar to the likes of the one that amushed them on the bridge just moments ago. But that was only because of moblins’ sheer size. More room for muscle meant more chances of getting kicked off a cliff, which had happened before. Surprisingly, not to Link. 

Wolfie could feel a tingle in his metal cuff, so he tugged the wary hero forward, determined to aid in this last fight no matter what kind of magic the monster had. 

At first, everything seemed fine. Both of them had gotten so used to the sound of thunder and rain that they didn’t notice the slightly off sounding pitter patter behind them, watching as they skeptically approached the land bridge over Ruto Lake. 

Too late did Wolfie’s senses pick up on the presence of something other, the monster had gotten the jump on them. 

It appeared with a childish giggle and a spin; a grotesque, insulting imitation of a ballerina. In its claws rested a mean looking staff that was made of what looked like crystallized electricity itself, the crackling orb in between two harsh, intertwining sheets of steel like a miniature sun. It had two beady yellow eyes and a wicked grin full of decaying teeth. 

Wolfie lept backwards, nose raised to the sky, and let out three vicious barks that resonated in his chest. 

Link’s ears flattened against the side of his skull, his nose wrinkled in a growl. With bright teal tendrils of light, a great Guardian battleaxe was clutched with two practiced hands. His Sheikah Slate pinged as the thing danced through the air nearer, almost leaving ripples where toes touched invisible ground. 

They would investigate the monster’s entry later. 

Wolfie sprung at it, putting all his might into his hind legs so it could bring the monstrosity down from the air. Link made a distressed, confused noise when it instead laughed and disappeared, sending Wolfie tumbling without his prey. 

The hero spun around when the creature appeared again, this time with its dark hands raised to the sky. It stomped the air, summoning a massive gust of wind that blew Link’s hood into his face. A bolt hit a tree behind them, putting white spots in both of their eyes and filling the air with the noise of a roaring fire. 

It disappeared before the neon blue axe could slice its head off it’s shoulders. 

Wolfie and Link backed up in time with each other, eyes darting from place to place. The fire had been hastily put out by the heavy rainfall, a few warped wooden boko spears impaled burnt fish into the ground, and the drop off the cliff into the raging, turbulent river was significant. 

The trickster appeared again, laugh hysterical when both warriors missed their blows. Wolfie was steadily growing angry, his huge mane sticking up with rage. Oh, if only he had thumbs to use his hero gear!

Link seemed to share his sentiment, especially when five electric keese materialized from seemingly thin air. With an incensed snarl, Link switched his heavy hitting weapon out with a lizal spear he’d robbed their previous adversaries of. It was a mighty weapon, with two biting points and a razor edge. The metal tip, though, glistened with electricity when three of the keese went down. Wolfie would have to noiselessly call him out on his hypocritical usage of a metal weapon. 

The fourth keese tumbled into the furious water below with half a wing in the wolf’s jaws, and the fifth was easily dispatched with a well timed jab. The monster's friends gone, it showed itself with an almost hurt expression. 

That made him feel smug. 

It stomped a disfigured foot again, screeching in annoyance. Once more, it lifted its arms above its head, and down came multiple strikes of lightning. One particularly harsh bolt rang in Wolfie’s eardrums when it blew open a metal case next to them, sending debris and it’s rupee contents scattering. 

Link whined, and plunged the spear at the exposed monster. It staggered and let out another yowl, vanishing only to come back seconds later with a dramatic twist into the air that mocked a graceful dance. 

Wolfie’s hackles shot rimrod straight, a terrifying buzz flooding his shackled leg. He looked down only to see it shining with small sparks that bounced off his slick fur. 

Within the millisecond, a red hot blast echoed in his head, the smell of burning fur searing his nostrils. He’d been smited vengefully, and the toddlerish thing’s laugh was disgusting in his ears. Vaguely, he could hear a familiar battle wail, but his temples pounded too hard to dwell on it any longer.

The grass was good, he could lay there. It was soft and cold, away from the agonizing heat of lightning.

_ “Wolfie!”  _ Link cried distinctly, and the beast whimpered at the noise. Gentle, textured hands felt singed fur, and Wolfie could hear the squelch of knees dropping to the ground next to his head. “Ow!” 

His lip curled at whatever had hurt Link, but his limbs were paralyzed. 

“It’s fine, boy,” the hero soothed. Wolfie’s eyes flickered open to see his hands hovering above his head, making petting motions in the air. “Your elixir is working, you’re just going to have to shake off the residual shock.”

Oh.

After a few silent moments of struggle, Wolfie’s head reared up and he was back on his paws. Link whooped, happily digging his hands in delightfully poofy fur. The elixir deflected the zap from reaching inside his body, but such a strong strike had jarred his frustratingly fragile wolf bones. 

He growled their shared friendly little growl, and licked Link’s face with as much slobber as he could muster. The boy let out an exclamation of mirthful disgust, and shook up with a hand wiping the saliva from his face. 

The monster was called a wizzrobe. The Sheikah Slate unhelpfully remarked that the weather should stabilize once the wizzrobe was defeated, as the small electric elementals were often the cause of small local thunderstorms due to the magical powers found in their rods. But one glance at the lightning still flashing in the pitch clouds above proved that to be untrue. 

Link’s gaze landed on the glowing staff that had dropped after he had run the thing through with his spear, and the mischievous glint in his eyes instantly gave Wolfie an even bigger migraine than being struck by lightning had. 

With a deft hand, the wild hero snatched it up, and his prideful smile revealed all of the troublemaking he was intent on getting into with a magical weapon now in his possession.

_ Hylia, in all of her silent, unresponsive glory, help Zora’s Domain when that feral goblin walks past that bridge,  _ Wolfie prayed, even as he followed right on said goblin’s heels. For all of his dread, he was eager to see the first act of weather-produced terror. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as the tags state, this is gonna be a lil book of oneshots my brain conjures up as i play through the game for the... *checks writing on hand* fourth time. rn i'm just writing to catch up to where i am in the game, so expect semi-frequent additions as i project my dumbassery onto these two.
> 
> next chapter: sidon has a talk (?) with wolfie, plus probably some more dragon action because im fascinated with them flying snakes and their implications in the lore


	4. it isn't perfect, but it's all we have

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alright, i lied. there is no Sidon or dragon action in this chapter
> 
> in my defense, i forgot how freaking long the whole talking to the king, and then remembering Mipha, and then fighting the lynel thing was. i literally spent maybe 3 hours just copying down dialogue (shoutout to BeardBear on YT) and another hour making my own changes (because, no offense, but yikes video game dialogue doesn't fit into the show-don't-tell rule that well). this chapter would have taken FOR. EVER. to upload if i went the route i wanted to go with an added bonus of dragons. 
> 
> anyways, have some Wolfie and Link exploring a quiet Zora's Domain. calm before the storm, i suppose. NEXT chapter will have the big ol shark goofball we all love so much, pinkie promise.
> 
> enjoy!

The luminous stone pillars made for both a serene and a frustratingly bright environment. Clouds quilted the sky, thunder no longer rumbling like a carriage over cobblestone, but the noise of the rain and wind replaced that all the same. Zora’s Domain was utterly silent in the night time, only the front entrance guards remaining. They were exchanging hushed words with each other, a laugh here, and scoff there, but when Link and Wolfie approached the end of the massive bridge they stood straight and drove their crescent-tipped silver spears into the ground.

“Halt!” one of them said, crossing the polearm over the gap that would lead them into the center square.

So close up, Wolfie realized that Zora’s domain was not so grand anymore. The throne room must be located at the very top, where the prince and king could reside. It looked just elaborate enough for royalty. But the rest of the bulk of the structure, raised out of the lake by sturdy, fancy pillars of glowing blue, was mainly a tiered circle. 

There was a lot of decoration, but not a lot of substance, and Wolfie wondered if that had some sort of political purpose. Well, as much politics as there was in a land ravaged by time and nature.

Link drew to a stop, wetting parched lips with a tongue. He held his hands up in surrender. The lightning rod was since long gone, mischief saved for when the sun rose. 

“Dunma, stand down,” the second guard settled. This one had a calmer voice, with a tone of maturity, but laughter lines on scaled skin betrayed an aged levity, as well. “This is the Hylian Prince Sidon said would be arriving, don’t you see? Blonde hair, hooded face, this one is even short as well.”

Link made an indignant sound at being called short, and Wolfie could feel his fingers twitch against his neck like he wanted to fire back a retort. The wolf hummed in amusement and pressed a wet flank against his companion’s side, which earned him an offended, lighthearted glare. 

Dunma, the indigo Zora that had commanded them to stop, lowered their spear and sent a glance at their friend–or father rather, as they acknowledged him with a fair amount of affection under the guise of propriety. 

The green Zora stood in front of them, a delicate chain on his weapon clacking against the puddled floor, and bent to get a good look at Link’s face. 

Link leaned back a bit, and ducked when the guard reached to pull off his hood.  _ No touch,  _ he signed, and he nodded respectfully, but didn’t draw away. 

Up so close, Wolfie could tell that the Zora guards’ armor was sparse but effective. None near the chest area, which should be protected at all times if they were trained properly, but a lot near the sides and the back of the head where fragile gills and crucial weak points were. He supposed it would be difficult to fit all of those fishy fins into a metal suit, anyway. Efficient.

“Is it truly you?” the green Zora asked with an amazed look in his narrow eyes. “The Hylian Champion?  _ Master Link?” _

The hero’s hand tugged gently on the thick mane of Wolfie, seeking comfort in a suddenly cramped conversation.  _ That my name,  _ he replied simply, frowning a little when the apparently familiar Zora leaned back with a joyous crow. 

“It’s me!” he cried. “Rivan! We used to swim together in Ralis Pond when I was but a young fry. Oh, those were the days! Do you remember?”

Wolfie startled at the familiar name, pelt rippling with surprise. Came to the forefront of his mind was a carriage, a best friend pressing on blue scales with desperate cries, determined to help a foreign child out of the kindness of her heart, not knowing that he had spoken to the boy’s dead mother with the voice of a siren and the intentions of a mournful ruler. Not knowing that he was to be a king.

Ralis. Prince Ralis– _ King  _ Ralis. Did they know?

Link didn’t react to the location so much as the question, lips drawing tight and ears wilting. He didn’t enjoy conversations like these, he didn’t enjoy letting people down. It was a tender topic in any regard; failure, that is. At first Wolfie thought that Link could always lie, say that he did remember to spare himself some pain, but he soon after he realized that was more burning than the alternative, even if Rivan drooped at the negative answer. 

“Oh,” the guard responded, doing a poor job at masking a measure of disappointment. “No matter, it has been a hundred years after all. Actually, you just missed my hundred-and-thirtieth hatchday. A bummer, the pie was delicious!” 

_ Sorry,  _ Link signed, the motion white knuckled. The blue looped earring on Wolfie’s ear dangled with a twitch.

“It’s quite alright, it’s just a normal day now that I’m so much older, yeah?” He was beginning to think that Link wouldn’t need to talk here simply because the Zoras would do it all for him. “Now that I think about it, I don’t think I ever wished you a happy hatchday all those years ago either. Goddess, but that day was awful anyhow…” 

Link tensed, and Wolfie couldn’t help but whine at the iron grip on his fur. The boy quickly relaxed, giving his friend an apology stroke, but Wolfie moved forwards with athletic hindquarters and slipped between the two guards. He looked up with flattened ears at Link, who cradled his hands against his chest and worried his lower lip between his teeth.

Dunma made a noise of protest and turned. “Father, that is enough chatting. Prince Sidon wanted to tell us that he and his Majesty would meet Master Link in the morning, yes?” 

Rivan sighed, giving Link an apologetic smile. “Yes, of course, my child. Rest up, warrior. The Seabed Inn is open any hour, Kodah always discounts travelers. You have a big day tomorrow.” 

The hero was let past with an extravagant gesture of the silver spears and two nods. He immediately took up his usual place beside Wolfie and signed rapidly at his partner. 

_ Sorry. Sorry, sorry,  _ he said with shaking fingers. He explained that when Rivan had mentioned his birthday, substituting the Zora’s name for the word  _ river _ , something had rattled him. He didn’t mean to pull his fur, and he was sorry that it hurt.

Wolfie made a soothing sound in the back of his throat, leaning into Link’s hesitant, gentle hands as he gave him apology pets. He’d forgiven him already, no explanation needed, but the other continued.

He bit his lip and looked away, something distant in his eyes.  _ How old I am…  _ and then tilted his head with a bittersweet smile at Wolfie, indicating that it was a question. Tangled golden hair moved in front of his eyes when he shook his head to sign,  _ don’t know.  _

Link’s birthday. That was it. He didn’t know his age, and that had scared him. 

He softened.  _ Let’s get you fixed up, little beast,  _ he thought, shrugging a great shoulder and wagging his tail.  _ And fed, too. _

They ventured further into the Domain with one last wistful glance at Rivan, who was once more conversing with his child, and found that while it was smaller than expected it was still larger than the likes of Kakariko. On offshoots of the main square that were supported by tall luminescent towers were quaint homes, just a few to accompany a proportionate amount of families, and underneath the prominent overhang of the tiered center was what looked like an open nursery. Books and toys in the corner of that room indicated that it doubled as a school. The roads that lead to those small homes were running with rainwater, flooding the floors, though Wolfie suspected that the slick stone would be wet without Vah Ruta’s storm anyways. 

The Shrine, orange and obvious from the entrance bridge, was activated with a tap of the Slate, but Link shook his fist in a  _ no  _ when Wolfie asked him silently if he was going to complete it tonight.  _ Later. After King.  _ They did take the silver longsword from behind it though, and Link convinced Wolfie to wait for him by the steps while he waded through the lily pads to pry some fleet-lotus seeds from their flowers. He shook off the excess water like a dog afterwards, sideburns smacking his cheeks, and grinned when a drenched Wolfie gave him a stink eye. 

Rivan had mentioned a Seabed Inn, and a quick search ended with them at the front door of a small little place nestled between the school and a road to an eastern watchtower. They recognized it not from the unfamiliar Zoran letters that must’ve marked the name on the sign, but from a simple crescent moon symbol that was the universal indicator of a safe place to rest. Often wanderers came into villages seeking urgent shelter, and the cross-lingual signs were a way to communicate swiftly without words. 

Wolfie watched as Link considered the door, and then as quickly as he extended it put his hand away.  _ Not there,  _ he decided with a sigh.  _ Too small. Could get trapped. _

He decided not to pay attention to the Zora at the front desk, Kodah, if Wolfie remembered correctly, sleepily studying them through a window without glass. 

It took them almost thirty minutes to find a hidey hole with a cookpot over a damp bundle of wood. It was a shallow alcove in a wall, obviously a place for a temporary vendor and not for a home, but the entire wall being open was a relief to Link. It was sheltered by a narrow overhang meant to place a sign on, had a few vases probably meant to store wares, and it was somewhat hidden from the eyes of the Domain’s center by the cylindrical pillars of the watchtowers. 

They both immediately recognized that this would be much better than an inn, even without a bed. There was a difference, albeit a small one to an onlooker, between a cramped room and a small cave. Caves had wide open entrances that left room for both escape and fresh air, while a door between them and the elements had always felt confining. 

The Sheikah Slate turned on with a chime and a flash of blue. A fire arrow was summoned in the palm of the hero’s hand lazily. He broke the tip off and ground the magic orange crystal into the extinguished campfire, which set the driftwood under the pot ablaze without a second thought. The rest of the ruined arrow was discarded as firewood. 

_ What I said for dinner before?  _ Link asked as he granted Wolfie the humming stone tablet. Helped him swipe through the recipes with his non-pawed hands and read out the titles of the meals. 

Everything was written in Sheikah runes, boxy things accentuated by harsh, geometric lines and simple dots. They were easy to learn individually when you were faced with an alphabet sheet, but blended together to make words they quickly looked the same. A seemingly simple language that turned out to be much more complex when put into practice; a snug fit for the Sheikah tribe. 

At least Link could read and write in a language at all, even if it wasn’t Hylian. Wolfie was familiar with cultural barriers, even significant ones like this, so it didn’t bother him. 

_ Bird P I L A F,  _ he signed.  _ Meat and rice.  _ His eyebrows went up when Wolfie rested a heavy paw on the ingredient list for the meat and rice bowl and nodded. 

_ This it? _

Another nod.

He was willing to search through the entire Sheikah Slate, foreign language included, if it helped Link feel better about his memory issues–short term or long term. The Shrine of Resurrection hadn’t only affected his knowledge of the past, oftentimes he forgot simple things as well. Names, quantities, where things were located, especially little details like where certain foods grew or which person wanted him to retrieve what, they all slipped between his fingers as easily as a doe between trees. Wolfie managed a thanks to whichever savior left the Slate in that Shrine he woke up in frequently, because otherwise they would be pausing to reaffirm everything every second of every day and going through notebooks like weapons.

Link looked around for a few moments, double checking the instructions on the Slate, and pulled a belt from around his waist. He wrapped it around one of the tall pots that had the mouth of a fish and a paint job to match.  _ Get water, please?  _ He held the container out towards Wolfie.  _ Waterfall in big square, about two cups. I will thresh rice.  _ And then he gestured how much space a cup would fill up in the pot. 

Wolfie paused and stopped the boy from picking up the Slate from under his large paw. He lowered his head and whined, using a cold nose to swipe through the thing until he managed to land on the page filled with spare elixirs. 

_ I will heal soon,  _ Link smiled and patted his injured shoulder.  _ While you get water.  _

Fierce sunset blues met the striking cobalt of the other, daring him to trick his wolf friend into believing that he was going to tend to the blistering wound when he really wasn't. 

_ I promise,  _ the younger added with an exasperated breath and a blown raspberry. The last movement of the second word was drawn out like a whining toddler.  _ Mother hen. _

Satisfied, Wolfie trotted away to collect the appropriate amount of water needed for the rice to simmer in, just narrowly avoiding spilling the entire pot into the lake below when he went to draw it out from underneath the decorative waterfall. The belt kept it upright while he dragged it by the leather as noiselessly as possible to their small hideout. 

It pleased him to see that the kid actually did wrangle off his layers and treat his wounds, even if he did so with a stale hearty potion instead of a fresh one that the inn could have provided. Something familiar pricked him at the sight of scars that marred the entire left side of his body, roughing up otherwise smooth, perfect flesh and warping it so horribly that it caused sympathy pain the first time he saw them. They looked especially angry under the icy lighting, like they were on fire and brand new instead of over a hundred years old. 

He gently brushed his fluffy side against the tender skin of the hero’s spine, making sure to let out an unassuming warning yip beforehand. That side of Link’s torso was numb, he knew, but he’d feel the heat if not the graze. 

Link whispered–with his tongue, not his hands–a shy hello before taking a corner of his old worn shirt that he’d found on the Great Plateau and ripping it into a bandage that he could wrap around his shoulder blades. It wasn’t gauze, but it was something. 

Most times something was better than nothing. 

Which was why when both of them barely got two hours of shuteye, simultaneously too exhausted and too restless to sleep through the night, they didn’t haggle each other for that either. Instead, they came up with names for constellations.

They were sure the star patterns already had names that Link just couldn’t recall, but it was nice to have another thing that was exclusively theirs. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i took some liberties with Zora's Domain like i will with all the 4 major towns. idk, they all feel so empty for having so many people! where does everyone live?! lol (also yes, i made Dunma nb because of my headcanon that Zora have no sexual dimorphism. sue me) 
> 
> also, thank you guys so much for all the wonderful kudos! it makes me happy to see that people enjoy my writing so much. if theres anything you want clarified, an idea you have that you think might fit, or even if you just wanna talk, you can always boop it down in the comments. i dont bite, i promise ^w^ and i love feedback on everything and anything (even if i dont respond, i always read comments. sometimes im just too awkward to actually reply, i'm sorry!)
> 
> pls be careful out there chirren, tHeREs A lOt Of sOdIuM


	5. there's something missing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a DOOZY of a chapter that i had to split in half yet again for fear of leaving yall hanging for a month. i'm terrible at long character interactions, especially relatively scripted ones with more than a couple characters, so if anything looks sketchy in here please let me know. i couldn't handle revising it. 
> 
> !! enjoy!!!

They quickly learned, when the red light of dawn spilled into the sky and chased away their stars, that the Zora were a people who remembered everything and wanted to talk about it. Link’s face was like a prompt, sparking ramblings about times neither he nor Wolfie knew about, causing people to approach him and try to touch him like a childhood friend. 

Some of the recounts of memories that a century must’ve surely swallowed seemed fake, and Wolfie knew Link thought so too. But his thoughts were that the Zora were kind-hearted, oblivious to the tight smiles that didn’t reach the hero’s eyes when normally his entire face blazed with the force of his joy. It was only the nature of one’s brain to embellish and deceive, at least he thought. The Zora weren’t doing it on purpose. 

Wolfie’s cynical mind said they were just lying. Nothing more. He felt something because of that, felt some sort of way about how the negative option was always the first to come to him, but he didn’t quite want to unpack that just yet. So the skepticism remained locked and shoved into a corner. With it there, hidden but not quite forgotten, he could focus on pretending to be annoyed whenever Link introduced him by name and a Zora would bend down to speak to him like a dog. 

It was hard to act aloof when Link’s face screwed up a little, barely noticeable to anyone other than Wolfie or perhaps Impa but enough to look silly, when Kodah enthusiastically called him ‘Linny’ over and over again. Maybe hoping that the nickname would spark something.

It didn’t do anything but make the pressure in Link’s lungs stubbornly build. 

He nodded anyways when Kodah asked to catch up later, despite having no intention of doing so. Her scales were a familiar pink, not because he remembered when she dared him to eat octorok or because he recalled how many rupees it took to get Gaddison to confess to his crush of about two weeks, but because they were the same color as the sunset from atop Dueling Peaks. They were the same color as a sproutling armoranth. 

Wolfie could tell it made Link feel guilty to lie like that, but it was a little kinder than the truth. 

The children–or the fries, as everyone seemed to call young Zoras–were the lightest thing in the Domain. They would tug at Link’s Hylian hood, ooh and ah at the different weapons he showed them briefly, and ask to touch his hair. They were energetic, frightful little devils, but Link managed to crack a genuine smile and Wolfie would admit to only himself that he enjoyed the clumsy attempts at braiding his mess of a mane, so they were the best in his book. 

The lightning rod was put to good use as a passable firework rocket, which had the kids shrieking in delight, but earned him a warning glare from Dunma. Link sheepishly hid the staff behind him at that, as if he had nothing in his hands and the guard hadn’t just seen him showing off. 

Keye, a fry who’s baby scales still hadn’t shed yet, had dragged the wild hero into an avid conversation with his friend Tumbo about hot-footed frogs, which was such a relief compared to the expectant questions and disappointed looks. The children didn’t even judge him when he quickly gestured that he had to leave, they just waved animatedly until they couldn’t see him around the corner anymore.

_ Your hair is a mess,  _ Wolfie observed with an amused eye as if Link could hear him.  _ And this time I’m not waiting around for you to brush it out only for it to get tangled again.  _

Link hip checked him as if he could read his thoughts, and he didn’t have the heart to tackle him to the floor when it resulted in a chase up prismarine stairs. But Wolfie made sure Link knew that was a gracious gesture by just nearly bowling him over with a shove instead of taking him down like a boar. 

Outside, where they were by themselves, it might have escalated into a play fight complete with barking and flashed teeth. But they both knew better than to get into a mock battle here, especially when the second tier of Zora’s Domain was much more elegant and devoid of any lodgings or merchants’ nooks. It looked almost ceremonial, what with the slight purple decorations now present and the ginormous statue of a pious looking, petite Zora with a sweet face, round eyes, and a tail that would have resembled Sidon’s if it weren’t flat-finned. 

They must’ve caught them staring, because a regal Zora with an air of authority who introduced themself as Laflat studiously asked them if they were curious about the depiction of someone called Lady Mipha. 

Wolfie almost nodded, convinced that Link would say yes, but stopped himself when Link denied the offer with a small wave and a humorous salute.

This Lady Mipha bore a strong resemblance to what he could remember of Queen Rutela when she visited him as a ghost, and Wolfie wondered if they would both have the same caring gaze if one weren’t long dead and the other stone. For a few seconds he was lost in the past, the waters of speculation deep, but apparently a few seconds was all it took for Link to get into a scuffle without him.

“ _ Hey! _ Oh–you!” an aged, furious voice yelled. It pulled Wolfie from his thoughts and turned him towards a hunched green Zora and a startled Link. The latter had a shock arrow held up high, where the elderly man couldn’t retrieve it. “You’re Link!”

There was venom in that statement, and it made the Twilit beast hesitate to observe the exchange. If Link needed him, he would be there, but typically angry stable-goers or merchants didn’t have a knack for acting calm around a huge wolf who really needed to work on learning not to growl at people he didn’t like. 

He could see Link nod. 

The Zora hissed victoriously, like he had uncovered a great secret. “I can finally avenge Lady Mipha! It has been a hundred years since you last showed your face here, and now I will cut you down myself!” 

Link just stood on his toes when the elder reached for the arrow and puffed his cheeks out in the way he did when he was confused about something. The threat didn’t seem to daunt him, he just wanted to snatch the arrow. 

Okay, Wolfie admitted to being too curious to stay away any longer, especially when the old Zora started to mutter to himself in a manner that almost sounded like narration. It was about Lady Mipha, he told himself, not because he wanted to know exactly how a Zora who couldn’t even steal back an arrow from a hero planned to strike him down. 

_ What?  _ Link signed, blue sparking and absorbing the arrow before Seggin could snatch it out of his palm. Wolfie cautiously approached and nudged the Sheikah Slate. Fur rubbed against Link’s thigh. A tilted head betrayed his confessed nosiness.  _ No memory.  _ He tapped his head exaggeratedly to emphasize just how empty that part of his brain was. 

“Aha! Playing dumb, eh?” Seggin folded his fins behind his back, letting an embroidered pink scarf dangle from a delicate throat. The scowl on his face soured a complexion that might’ve been striking, what with the deep green scales and yellow bioluminescent spots that resembled eyebrows. “Nice try, but you cannot fool me, Champion. You were unable to protect Lady Mipha from Calamity Ganon, and now you show up as if nothing happened! How disgraceful.  _ Truly _ revolting.” 

Wolfie’s hackles raised, red gums making an appearance from behind a curled lip, but Link quickly tried to smooth down the evidence of his friend’s offense before the Zora could notice. His brows furrowed, whether in concentration or in confusion Wolfie didn’t notice. He was too busy thinking about how to get this elder to shut up without resorting to jaws. 

“Poor Mipha,” Seggin continued on with a clawed, frail hand over his heart and a ponderous croon in his voice. “So young… so much life snuffed out…’ 

Link began talking with reassurance in his determined blues, even if his fingers trembled at being accused of something akin to murder.  _ Now I will help with B E A S T.  _ He fingerspelled that so he could aggrandize the capital B, and pointed at the sky for extra measure.  _ No more death. _

Seggin merely turned his head disrespectfully and flared his fins. “Hmph! There is no way us Zora would want you anywhere near Vah Ruta after all that has happened. Your help is both unwanted and unnecessary.” 

Raised fur was once again patted down with a heavy exhale, and Link waved to try to get Seggin’s gaze back on him. There was a choked noise, something to regain attention so he would speak, but nothing past that managed to worm its way out of an unwilling and damaged throat. Wolfie instead yipped at the old man, perhaps with a little too much ire, which certainly got him to look. 

_ S I D O N wanted help. Where King’s Room?  _

“Even if the prince himself asked for your assistance, it would do no good!” The Zora pointedly and blatantly ignored Link’s question. “So says I, Seggin, the Demon Sergeant! I will rid Zora’s Domain of Vah Ruta myself and free Lady Mipha’s gentle soul from her terrible prison. A prison imposed on her by your failure! _Link.” _

The hero’s name was tacked onto the end of that gloriously melodramatic speech as an afterthought, but it was spat at him like even the sound of it was the most disgusting bokoblin food Seggin had ever tasted. It made Link flinch hard and thread a hand into Wolfie’s neck, pulling tenderly at inky locks of fur. 

“Now!” the elder continued, holding a hand out very close to Link’s face, which also made him retreat further from the vengeful character. “If you understand a single thing about courage, you will give me back the arrow I was using to train and get out of my way this instant!” 

Wolfie didn’t notice his boy stumble when he stepped forwards abruptly, glowering at the Zora. His mane was fluffed to its full height despite Link’s attempts to tame it, which made him seem even larger than his already huge size. 

“Goodness!” Seggin exclaimed, stepping back with his hand clutching his jewelry.

With a frightening growl he shoved uncaringly past the wide-eyed sergeant and up the remaining stairs, Link in tow behind him. He whacked the hero with a tail when he turned to try to apologize and wave goodbye, of all things, to that antagonistic fucker. 

_ I should’ve barked at him.  _ Wolfie stared Link dead in the eyes, very much hoping that he could sense his displeasure with that particular interaction.  _ I should’ve protected you from that horseshit. _

Link just shrugged. His face was cold and locked down, a defense mechanism that Wolfie quickly recognized. It was like a fortress tugging up a drawbridge to halt an invading force, it shut off the enemy from entrance completely. Unfortunately, it also shut off him.

He leaned all his weight on Link’s leg, looking up with soft eyes. They weren’t truly alone, what with Seggin below them and a couple guards posted just around the corner, but it was alone enough for Link’s frigid gaze to melt just a little. 

Wolfie’s presence was sometimes a lot for the kid, and he knew that. It was a lot to explain to other people, it was a lot to account for if a conversation went sour, it was a lot to reflect on if the beast acted of his own accord instead of only backing him up. 

But Wolfie’s presence could also be a blanket, something heavy but not crushing, warm but not scalding, soft but not squishy. And he was glad that at least that didn’t change, even when him being there was the wrong kind of ‘a lot’ for a few throbbing minutes.

A comforting rumble escaped the wolf’s throat before a strong jaw rested itself around a wrist. He didn’t bite or press, just let teeth touch skin in a signal of trust and friendliness. Link brightened further at the display of affection and patted his head.

He was still a fortress when he asked the guard with a clenched jaw and as few words as possible where the throne room was, but his chin was held higher. The monarch behind those stone walls was willing to peek a shy eye through a window, and that was good enough for Wolfie. 

* * *

Sidon’s voice was sudden and thunderous when he greeted Link at the mouth of the throne room. A large hand grasped the smaller Hylian’s and shook it rapidly. Wolfie resisted a snort at the bewildered look on Link’s face. 

“You arrived! Safe and sound, I hope,” the prince exclaimed, a little breathless. “I deeply regret that I could not greet you at Zora Bridge. I had to enforce curfew, though that is no excuse for inhospitality.” 

Curfew. Even Zora’s Domain wasn’t immune to the danger of a child wandering off at night and that was strangely comforting to the wolf.  _ Maybe Sidon isn’t so bad _ , he figured as he observed the tiny hero’s body recover from the minor earthquake the Zora had sent up his arm and through his body. 

Despite the well-intentioned aggression, Link hadn’t shrunk away from the handshake. 

Sidon smiled his large, toothy smile, and swept an arm to reveal the room to them. 

In the corner sat a frail looking green Zora with a flat head like an ocean ray’s. He was taking notes on something, reaching to dip a feather in an inkwell occasionally, so it must be official and important. He muttered to himself in an aged voice, and didn’t look up when they entered the room. Ornate arches decorated curved walls, the space shaped like the interior of a bell, but everything paled in comparison to the throne the King was sat on.

Because that must’ve been the King. If he wasn’t, Wolfie was going to throw away everything and start a new life as a sheep dog. 

He held a fabric of shimmering blue and purest silver, reverently though Wolfie thought it might’ve been some sort of royal handkerchief. The Zora himself resembled some species of whale, and it felt horribly disrespectful to say so, but that was how it was. There was simply no other way to describe his presence in an accurate manner. He was a whale. With long… sideburns–temple fins?–and a myriad of scars engraved in his grizzled face. A stark contrast to the jovial sparkle in his eyes and the rotund belly he sported. 

There was a legend in his ancient Hyrule, Wolfie recalled, of a great red bird that came from an island in the sky who left trinkets and candies at candlelit windowsills every Yule’s Night. According to tradition, it was depicted with an impossibly large, round, protruding bill, wings wider than a house, and a feathery tail that resembled more of a cat’s tail than a bird’s. Strangely, despite the huge description, no one had seen the thing. 

The King, with his soft shapes and larger than life demeanor, reminded him of that bird, and Wolfie wondered if this is what it became. 

“This is my father,” Sidon introduced happily. “Father, this is Link and Wolfie.” 

Link and Wolfie moved in time to bow, Link getting on one muddied knee in the same way he had for Sidon, and Wolfie by spreading his front paws in front of him and pressing his muzzle to the polished floor. 

The King eyed them, and laughed. It was a kind sound, though Link’s eyes were still slightly worried when they met his companion’s. “Ah, rise!” The monarch commanded with a wave of a fin. “Kneeling is an old tradition, one I do not see much. How impressive! You must be the Hylian that my boy was talking my ear off about last night.” 

Sidon went blue. A blush?

“Did you rest well? It must have been difficult to come all the way here, the path is not meant for dry folk. We do not get many visitors for that reason.” He lowered his chin at them when the two heroes stood straight again, eyeing Link intently, silently, like he was expecting something. 

The tip of Link’s ears went red, and he shrugged off his dark hood with deft fingers. They’d both seemingly forgotten that it was on, like the fabric had melted into the top of his skull from all the rain pounding on it. It seems that it had proved quite useless as well, because Link’s hair was damp anyways.

“Well?” Link nodded, signing a hesitant  _ yes  _ to reaffirm his answer _ .  _ “That is good, I am happy! I am Dorephan, please do not hide from me. I do not bite, I promise.” His smile was reassuring, though his voice was just as boisterous as the prince’s. This was not a tyrant. Dorephan was not someone to be feared. 

Wolfie was glad to nip that in the bud immediately. He’d dealt with too many corrupt rulers and politicians to not blow a gasket if one showed up in this era. 

_ Or, more accurately, his Zelda had dealt with them and Wolfie and Ashei just intimidated them from across the ballroom.  _

Dorephan leaned forward, or, as forward as he could get seemingly stuck to the chair. Muscles clenched with the movement, large chin hanging open in an observant expression, with dark eyes perplexed by something about Link. “That object on your waist… may I get a better look at it, brave one?” 

Link startled, moving the hand covering the Sheikah Slate away from his hip. He’d gotten in the habit before Wolfie had even met him of having something covering it at all times. It was a resilient device, but neither of them knew how to fix it. Even Purah could not have repaired it if it was struck with a sword or a spear. He untied the twine and unhooked it from his belt, holding it up to the King with the glowing eye sideways as if he was going to take a picture. 

“I recognize this device!” Dorephan proclaimed, a grin spreading his face wide. “That is a Sheikah Slate, is it not?” The question must have been rhetorical, because he concluded, “Yes, it is,” before Link could answer with his hands. “Now that memories have returned to me, I think I know just who you are. And oh what a blessing this meeting is!”

Link bit the inside of his cheek, obvious by the way the skin sucked in at the motion. He still had a bit of a baby face, even with the burn marks and strong nose. 

It was both hilarious and achingly sad whenever Wolfie teased him for looking fifteen. Somehow he felt like the number wasn’t that far off the mark.

“I remember you, Champion Link!” the King announced, so loudly that the whole Domain must have heard the happy cry. “Do not tell me you have forgotten me, you visited me in this very room so many times. You were practically a Zora, you spent more time here than your old Hylian house!” 

The green elder at the table stiffened and looked up at the declaration of recognition. In his eyes was something indescribable, though certainly not pleasant.

_ Just wonderful,  _ Wolfie bit to himself.  _ Another one.  _

Sidon interrupted, paying no mind to their bitter bystander. Instead, awed eyes focused completely on the wild hero, even though his words were directed at his father. “ _ Champion  _ Link?  _ That  _ Link?” Now he was truly talking directly to the Hylian when he realized aloud, “So that’s where I heard your name before! What a fateful coincidence.” 

The conversation carried on at a mile a minute, and Wolfie’s prediction was true. Link didn’t need to talk here because the two Zora carried that burden all by themselves without effort, though he could tell he was dying to get something in. He didn’t like being in rapidfire conversation where he was talked around instead of to.

“I just cannot believe it! You know, I heard a terrible rumor that you fell in battle, but I found that preposterous.” The King threw his head back and laughed, revealing a mouth filled with flat-edged teeth. “Oh, a couple old friends owe me silver rupees now, eh? Old bets won are always the most fulfilling. Where have you been all these years?”

The older, silent Zora watched them closely, and Wolfie stared him down just so the elder knew that he was being watched right back. Their gazes met, but Wolfie’s was quickly dismissed, revealing a flippant attitude.

He was used to being regarded as just an animal, but that felt particularly mean.

Link hesitated. It was the sign equivalent of an um.  _ Sleeping. Not purposely.  _ A facial tick betrayed the want to wince at his poor wording, the few seconds of deliberation hadn’t done any good. 

Their quiet overseer sniffed pithily, but the two royals didn’t seem to think worse of Link despite the lame explanation. Though Sidon did look a bit confused. 

“Sleeping, you say? Hm. Is that why you do not seem to remember me?” The King contemplated, fixing Link with curious eyes. 

_ Yes. No memories.  _

Dorephan sat back, a solemn air now permeating the room. Wolfie could feel Link wilt beside him. “But surely you must remember Mipha. There was not a day in Zora’s Domain that she was not with you. Thick as hinox blood, you two were.” 

Link’s nose wrinkled at the grotesque metaphor, which Wolfie couldn’t help but let out a hoarse laugh at. Or, as close to a laugh that a wolf could get.  _ No. Sorry.  _

“Oh,” the ruler mused sadly, but with it was not a frown of disappointment, unlike Rivan or Kodah. It was pity and he knew Link would go on endlessly about that later.

Pity made everything worse, Wolfie knew. He knew because he’d had his fair share of it and it was quick to sour every truth you told. It followed every hero’s spirit like a bloodhound, relentless and tiresome. 

“That is… truly sad,” the King went on. “Look upon Zora’s Domain, young hero,” he spread his fin out, a wide gesture to the crystalline buildings that glittered ethereally in the sunlight. “See that statue below?” Link nodded with heavy shoulders, leaning over the open window of the throne room.

Wolfie watched on from the center of the room, sending Sidon a glance. The prince looked distant however nonetheless concentrated, he was focused but not on this conversation. And was that an irritated set to his jaw? Wolfie thought the young man didn’t have a negative bone in his body. 

“That is Mipha,” Dorephan explained. Link nodded again, already aware. “Does seeing her not jog your memory?” 

_ No. Sorry,  _ Link signed again, eyes flicking to Sidon and surely noticing the same impatient line of his mouth. It spiked his nerves, and Wolfie nosed a cold hand. Link’s face scrunched up at the feeling of a warm tongue over his palm. He yanked it away from his friend, silently asking him if he really just licked him in front of the Zoran royal family. 

_ You gonna wash off the dog germs now or later?  _ Wolfie asked, amused. 

Link’s eyes told him to shut up. 

“Well, perhaps your memory–” 

The Zora prince opened his mouth with a loud, exasperated breath. “Father, I don’t think discussing my sister will achieve anything at the moment. Link seems confused, we wouldn’t want to leave him out of the water.” 

Sister. Now Wolfie understood why the King was so distraught to learn that the champion had no recollection of her, he’d forgotten his daughter. Goddess, if Wolfie had forgotten Colin he knew Uli would be distressed. 

There was no pity to the connection, just understanding. 

Link lingered by the windowsill a just a bit longer, before settling at Wolfie’s side as usual. His hand didn’t bunch in the wolf’s fur, just clutched the Sheikah Slate that was still in his hands like it would fall and shatter any moment. 

Dorephan said to Sidon quietly, as if Link’s twitching ears couldn’t pick his next words up, “Do not. Not  _ don’ _ t, little fry. Remember, proper grammar.” When his son nodded with a sigh and a mumble that sounded suspiciously like  _ not little anymore _ , the King turned to Link again with a wide, opening motion of his arms. It was a vulnerable position, one born of desperation. “Champion, I feel ashamed asking you this, but even so it is necessary. Zora’s Domain is in danger of vanishing because of Vah Ruta.” 

The hero nodded poignantly. Wolfie thought that if any more information was repeated to them, he would go insane. He itched to get moving, to do something, but Link didn’t show any annoyance, so he remained still with only a rippling, twitching pelt. 

“I shall do you the courtesy of speaking bluntly–”  _ thank the goddesses,  _ “–as that is what I would wish, if I were in your position. We Zora, alone, cannot stop her. So, I humbly ask you to lend us your strength.” 

“What!” The green elder shot up out of his seat, inkwell spilled and quill slammed into the table. He walked from behind it with old legs and an expression of horrified disbelief on his face. 

Wolfie’s head snapped to him, nighttime blue eyes icy. 

“King Dorephan! My liege!” He pointed a hooked, gnarled claw at Link, who avoided eye contact. A false spot on the unblemished floor was suddenly very interesting to him. “To ask a Hylian for help,” a fishy lip curled, revealing needle-like teeth, “why, the very thought just curls my fins! Please do not speak such nonsense.” 

Sidon stepped forwards, not intimidatingly but like he was reaching out to soothe the old Zora, and exclaimed at the same time as his father. “Muzu!” 

Dorephan targeted him, Muzu, with a harsh look. “I expected more of you. Can you not see when aid is needed, old friend?” 

The prince went down a different line of reasoning, opening one hand and balling the other both as if to beckon the advisor to see reason and to hold back some sort of emotion. “It is very rude to speak to your King like that. And to his guest as well! Link and his friend are here because I invited them, I have no doubt in my mind that he will do nothing but help us.” 

The throne, luminescent stones and pearls and sea glass as it was, creaked when the monarch rested the weight of his body on the backrest. “Indeed!” he announced. “As things now stand, Zora’s Domain, no, perhaps all of Hyrule is doomed to be swallowed by this artificial sea. This is bigger than the events of the past, Muzu. Zoras and Hylians alike must work to secure the safety of everyone.” 

Link raised his hands to speak, but Muzu cut in like a hot knife and allowed him not a word of reassurance. “Have you forgotten, my King?” Angry fists trembled. “We cannot trust these lowly Hylians. They abused the dark power of an ancient civilization and look what happened because of it! The path to Demise is paved with good intentions.” 

_ I will help–  _ Link tried again. 

“No!” The old Zora shook his head like a toddler. “It is their fault that Lady Mipha is now lost to us! How can you forgive–” 

Wolfie bayed shortly, a deep and throaty noise punctuated by snapping teeth. It wasn’t meant to be fearful, but it certainly shocked some surprise into those stubborn eyes. It was a bark demanding silence, and that’s precisely what happened. 

Dorephan continued cautiously, with a soft voice betraying sympathy. For who’s plight, Wolfie didn’t know. “...Link. Divine Beast Vah Ruta has great power. It endlessly creates water, and as such,” he gestured to the roof, but both heroes figured it was meant to mean the sky and the rain pouring from it, “the merciless storm. For Zoras, water and air are as one, but only for us. The East Reservoir Lake is almost to the point of flooding, Champion. And if the dam bursts as I predict, I fear immense damage to not only my home but also everything downstream of us. There, Hylian lives are in grave danger.” 

As if summoned, the mechanical monstrosity bellowed. The din rang in Wolfie’s sensitive ears, pressing them flat to his skull, and shook the delicate charms and lanterns throughout the Domain. Behind him, Link swiftly returned the Sheikah Slate to his hip and pressed two hands to his ears. 

Wolfie darted to the window, adjusting to the rumble quicker than his startled counterpart, and saw as Vah Ruta raised from the deep reservoir. Water cascaded off of it’s metal back in fountains. The water caught the eerie magenta glow of the lights on Ruta’s body and refracted it against the crystal of the Domain. It was an intimidating sight coupled with the knowledge that even from such a great distance, the Twilit wolf could hear grinding limbs as it pulled itself to the surface of the lake. 

“The Beast…” Dorephan said, voice raised over the clamor. If there was fear in those two words he hid it well, even when Vah Ruta settled and he could speak with more clarity. “I’ve used Princess Zelda’s research to discover that she has orbs on her shoulders that control the water generator. They need a power source to function, though, and the absence of such energy is why it is out of control.” 

Sidon piped up cheerily. “Seggin, the brave man,” Wolfie made a skeptical noise with his throat, still peering out of the window with two paws hanging over the edge, “struck an orb with a shock arrow and sure enough the water slowed. However, we can’t–cannot,” the prince corrected himself, “in good conscience risk our own people like that. That’s why I searched for you, Link!” 

Wolfie turned just in time to see Sidon give the wild hero a strong gesture, showing his muscles and grinning happily. Light seemed to spark on his teeth.

“Of course, there is the issue of swimming to Vah Ruta, which is why I’m offering you my aid in any way that might be useful to you. Please, let me help!” The offer sounded almost like a plea. 

“Sure,” Link said, which made heads turn. His voice was rough, as it always was from the vocal damage the Shrine had wrought on him, but it was distinct. Though, apparently, not familiar if Wolfie read the way Dorephan’s eyebrows shot up correctly. 

Muzu looked peeved, and he could stay like that for all he cared.

“Link!” the King truly beamed. “Thank you, young hero, we are in your debt.” He leaned forwards, close to the tiny Hylian like he was sharing a secret. Link was forced to shrink into the ground at the proximity. “Now then, between you and I, I don’t want my dear son to hurt himself doing all of that flashy swimwork he does.”

“Father!” Sidon protested indignantly. Dorephan hadn’t even attempted to be quiet. 

“Oh, I jest!” A fourth word,  _ partly,  _ was left out though it was definitely implied. “Even so, allow me to offer you this gift.” 

Extended forth was the handkerchief Wolfie noticed when they entered the room. Now, upon closer examination, he realized that it was not a handkerchief at all, but a tunic. It was regal and Link’s eyes widened a little as he accepted it carefully.

The hero beckoned Wolfie forward with his eyes and let him sniff at it with a tilted head. 

Muzu made a horrified noise of deep affront, and almost seemed genuinely revolted when Wolfie approached the garment. “Surely you do not intend to give this,” needle teeth ground against each other and words struggled past cracked lips, “this…  _ outsider  _ the Zora Heartpiece! You cannot just sell it away to any old Hylian, Champion Link or not. It’s sacred!” 

The Hylian in question removed a hand from the remarkably smooth fabric.  _ I will not damage– _

“Princess Mipha made that with her own hands for her betrothed!” Oh. “She told me herself when she was a fry! Surely you respect her wishes enough to keep it for such a special person as her lover?”

“Muzu–” 

“I cannot believe this. I cannot understand this!” The advisor shouted and clutched his head as if he’d given himself a migraine. “I must take my leave.” With that, he turned his back to the four and left, not even pausing to snatch up his documents. Muzu’s absence left the room quiet, only the rain daring to speak through the tension that Wolfie could feel carding through his fur like fingers.

“I’ll retrieve him,” Sidon interrupted, hurrying out of the room as if the air was toxic. Link watched him go, brow furrowed and confused. He looked at Wolfie as if his companion would give him answers instead of the awkward shrug he actually got in return. 

Dorephan, a slightly regretful color to his words, continued wistfully. He made no outward mention of Muzu and Sidon’s departure, but it was obvious that he felt some sort of way about it. Wolfie liked to pride himself on reading people, but even he wasn’t so keen on the thin line between shame and embarrassment. “The Zora Heartpiece,” the ruler echoed, “this garment bestows upon a Hylian the ability to swim up waterfalls as if they were a Zora. Our scales do not resist the water like skin.”

Link’s mouth made a hard line as he took another look at the tunic, thumb tracing the intricacies of the silver armor and the delicate yet permanent jewelry down onto the fabric. He held it up to the King after a moment.  _ Not for me.  _

He sighed low in his gut. “Oh, Link. You must understand Muzu, he was close to my daughter. She was to him like she was to us, so I cannot expect him to not be upset, and neither should you.” 

_ Is that blame?  _ Wolfie voicelessly dared the monarch. 

“But,”  _ good, _ “his anger is unjust. I apologize for his behavior and hope you do not let his words get to you. The Heartpiece is yours for as long as you’ll have it.” 

Another moment of studying, calloused, burned fingers tracing carefully threaded slopes, flesh hooking under scales and turning them every which way, trying to find any nook or cranny that might give him an excuse to return it. 

Wolfie knew the inner struggle, he’d felt the same with his own hero’s tunic. He hadn’t even worn it until teasing grew so relentless that he donned it just to save his own ego. Clothes were important. Very important. Especially to Link, who kept his blue champion’s garb tucked in Epona’s saddlebags, not in his Sheikah Slate where he would see it every time he opened his inventory of items. 

_ Thank you,  _ the hero finally said, fingers a little clumsy on the words but honest nonetheless.  _ No damage will happen.  _

“I trust you,” was the King’s only response. A small, knowing smile played on his lips. “Now, I think you should go break up those two. By themselves they are bullheaded, but with each other… I fear feelings may be hurt unwisely.”

Link nodded and shucked up his hood, gripping the Heartpiece tightly in hands Wolfie knew were kind despite their intensity.

Wolfie lingered for just a minute after the boy climbed down the stairs to the throne room to break up the prince and the advisor, but it was long enough to catch Dorephan’s words to him and only him, which surprised him when his focus had never centered around the Twilit beast despite being present for the whole conversation.

“You take care of that boy,” he said with something undefinable in his voice, syllables accompanied by something concerned but also strong. It was the kind of tone that Generals encouraged terrified soldiers with, but it was also more intimate. The soldier was a friend instead of a subordinate. “I’m sure he’ll need it. Even before this Calamity began, he never really cared for his own hide so long as he could get something done without it.”

_ Of course,  _ Wolfie confirmed, hoping his attention was enough for the King to know that he understood. He understood so deeply, and yet.  _ It’s my divine duty.  _

The wolf turned before he could see the subsequent head shake, like a teacher that had been told a slightly wrong answer. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wolfie, hun. you absolute buffoon. you hypocrite. i hurt myself sometimes. 
> 
> just wanna ask yall a question before i go: which divine beast should i head for after vah medoh? that's the point in the game that im at currently, minus a couple sidequests and somehow ending up at lake hylia, so after this fic catches up it's completely open from there. i want your guys' input! 
> 
> also? since when did this fic reach 1000 hits. thats insane, wtf. thank you so much for the crazy support! you guys are lovely! <3


	6. mipha's touch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the memory!!! the memory is finally here bois we did it.

_ “I was thinking…”  _

There was so much to a memory, Link had learned over the course of… two. One didn’t seem important at all, he could feel himself following a golden light as she chattered about ancient technology that he feared because he didn’t understand it. Asking him a question that he couldn’t recall, with an answer that was as fuzzy as what she really looked like. It felt mundane, but it was so important, because Link learned that maybe memories didn’t give him a vivid picture of what Lake Kolomo looked like a hundred years prior, they brought with them feelings and sensation instead. He remembered perfectly the feeling of soreness as he walked in boots a size too big for him seemingly endlessly, the noise of a brick road, the type of swallows that cheered in the background, but he couldn’t describe what the memory was about.

Only that he knew the golden light he trailed must’ve been the Princess, and the only thing he knew about her was that her hair caught on the light like a halo and her eyes were breathtaking emeralds full of contempt. 

Clarity came in time, he learned, because he could really see her in the second memory. Her hand was soft in his, cold and shivering, and her white dress fell just short of brushing her sandaled toes when she walked. There were other people at the base of the mountain that came in orange and blue and fiery reds, but nothing mattered compared to the adrenaline that blocked out everything else when the ground started shaking and those people started yelling out in anguish. The Princess' breath just hitched, and the last thing he recalled was a gust of wind and the smell of forest fires singing a song in time to a surge of overwhelming protectiveness. Whose safety he yearned so desperately for was still foreign to him.  


Those memories came fast and difficult, and oftentimes their nuances evaded him completely. The only thing he knew for sure was the location and that he was not quite himself.

This memory, however, came slowly. It came when he stepped foot into Zora’s Domain and looked upon that statue, and it swelled when people talked of his time here, but never had the edges of his vision curled away from him like this. It was more suffocating than having a flashback hit him like a wagon. 

_ Stale air, or as stale as it could get in this area, orange and warm and just the right amount of humid, but not wet. Not raining. That should be strange, but it wasn’t. _

_ Up high, they were somewhere up high, somewhere that clicked and groaned like stone against stone. The rock underneath him was smooth, if just a little imperfect, though. Like the edge of a worn blade.  _

_ A soft voice, she rolled his R’s like him but her consonants were not as heavy spoken. An ancient version of the language, with different pronunciations that didn’t belong in this Hyrule. _

_ She was a she. Who was she? _

“Mipha may have been your student, Muzu, but she was my sister,” Prince Sidon insisted in the background of his mind, pleading with his Zora advisor to listen. It was only the three of them at the base of the statue, Laflat had long since departed and Wolfie lingered behind supposedly to talk to the King. Somehow. “I know that Heartpiece belongs to Link, and she did too.”

Muzu harrumphed, stomping his foot in a way that distantly reminded him of that lightning wizzrobe. “You surely jest! You cannot fool me, not this Zora!” 

_ Where was he? _

He whimpered, but his cry was met with deafness. 

“I do not!” Sidon disputed, voice raising just a margin. It rang in his ears, but in the way a low noise pounded against earplugs. He felt like cotton had been shoved in his mouth and ears, and his vision was slowly fading to grey. “She would often tell me of when they first met, and how she knew even then as children–”

_ “This reminds me of the time we first met,” she mused, and warm, honeyed eyes met his through a haze of fog. Her mouth was small, but expressive and shy, and she had a rather prominent jaw. She looked as quiet as her voice. “You were just a reckless child. As you are now, really.” _

_ There was some sort of spark in his chest–he had a chest! It felt like annoyance, or, no, something more lighthearted and fond. Someone was touching his arm with frigid hands, marble skin. Was it her? Why did his skin sting like a hornet’s nest?  _

_ Words slipped from his throat, and he felt like he was choking. This was not his body, this mind was not his own, his voice was foreign and he could tell that for certain even if he missed the words actually spoken like they were clouded by some vengeful deity.  _

_ He remembered this, this feeling of unbelonging in memories, like he was a prisoner in a century old body. _

Help,  _ he tried whispering to the small Zora next to him, whose colors he could make out clearly. Her skin wasn’t dead, cold luminous stone and crystal, it was vibrant and colorful and if he was in his own body, tears might’ve fallen from his eyes. The scarlet was vivid but comforting, and it hurt something in him.  _

_ Instead, his captor shrugged shoulders and grinned cheekily.  _

_ “You know you cannot hide injuries like this for so long. No–shh,” she quieted his past self, who deigned to open his mouth in protest, “there is no reason, silly. You know I will heal you, just as I am doing now.”  _

_ Old eyes moved to the aforementioned wound, a jagged, large thing that opened a great portion of his forearm. There was no blood, but the skin was split and ragged.  _

_ What was his past self thinking? One trip in the dirt and a wound like that could get infected, and then he would be out of commission. This was his right arm too–his sword arm! He could fight perfectly well with his left arm, but then he would have no shield to defend himself. _

_ Fear hit him like a slap to the face, even if this was a memory. Link from a hundred years ago, though, didn’t seem phased. Was it normal for him to hide injuries? Before? _

_ Mipha, for this was Mipha and it felt wrong to put proper honorifics in front of her name even if his present mind was aching to do so, shook her head like she thought something funny. “Even if Hylians grow so much faster than we do, I’ll care for your scrapes and scars, even if the stories behind them are stupid.” _

_ He said something again, but it sounded like static.  _

_ “I laugh at them because they are crazy, Link. Remember when you were five, and you fell from Veiled Falls right on top of me? I healed you even then.”  _

_ He didn’t remember when he fell on top of her from Veiled Falls, he didn’t even know where Veiled Falls was. Her voice was so kind and warm, like a campfire or a hearth, though, that he pushed it aside. He very much remembered when he fell on top of her from Veiled Falls. Why wouldn’t he? _

_ Link fingered a familiar blue tunic’s sleeve and laughed, a noise uninterrupted by the mass of scar tissue that should’ve been in his throat. This felt like him, he was seeing through his eyes, but it was not him.  _

Mipha was talking to the wrong Link. 

_ What other Link might there be? _

_ She giggled with him, settling down to press gentle fingertips into his skin. He wouldn’t look away from the healing magic even if he had control over his body. It was beautiful and reminded him of a spray of mist at the end of a waterfall. It captured the light in just the right way and shined, the arch of a rainbow shimmering for just a bit before skin stitched itself together and closed as if sown by a needle. Mipha swatted his hand away when he examined it and went to itch at the pink, newborn skin.  _

_ The silence must’ve been comfortable to them, because they did nothing to change it. There must be something missing in the atmosphere, something he couldn’t recall just right. There always was. Even the pieces in the puzzle had missing pieces to their own puzzle. _

He wanted to get out. Goddamnit, hadn’t he told Hylia that he didn’t want to remember? _ _

_ She started, though, with clenched hands on delicate, ruby-freckled knees, and there was a swell of hope that she would stare into his eyes, new eyes, not eyes from a hundred years ago, and say that it was okay to want to leave.  _

_ Why did he want to leave in the first place? This was where he belonged. Silly him for thinking of something like that.  _

_ Instead she asked something that chilled him even more. Even his past self paused rolling down the sleeve of his undershirt to ponder the question. “So,” was the start, innocent enough. “If Calamity Ganon really does return, what can we really do?” _

_ Run, he wanted to say, and he might’ve actually, but the shapes his mouth made didn’t feel like it.  _ He remembered, at the base of Lanayru Mountain. He remembered the tremor, like the very earth itself heaved a large sob, crying in preparation for the end. Princess Zelda’s distraught, labored breathing. He remembered orange and blue and red and red and  _ red.  _

_ They wouldn’t be at Lanayru Mountain when the Calamity came, they would be at the castle with his Sword drawn like the heroes of old and staring down the embodiment of hate and malice without a flinch. What was he thinking? Was he insane? _

He remembered slipping, dislodging a boulder, something–someone pulling him up so the monster they were sneaking past wouldn’t see them. _ _

_ Who?  _

Wolfie. That’s who pulled him up.

_ He didn’t know a Wolfie. Maraudo wolves were vicious, if regal. _

Wolfie! He knew Wolfie, he knew Wolfie better than he knew himself! He tried to shake his head, to throw off the memory. This wasn’t him. He wasn’t this Link. 

_ The question returned: what other Link might there be? _

_ He rested a warm hand on Mipha’s shoulder, not saying anything. Maybe the contact was enough to jar her into speaking. “I’m sorry for making this so depressing all of the sudden,” she apologized unnecessarily. It was an important topic. _

It’s already happened!

_ “I’m just nervous, we don’t seem to know much about what we’ll be up against. But,” she looked up, pretty golden eyes staring straight into his soul with so much gentle warmth, like fairy wings. Strong and kind.  _

Let me out!

_ “I do know one thing.” There was resolve in her voice, immovable as a mountain. Burning absolute simmered in those eyes, he didn’t doubt her for a second. “No matter how difficult that battle will be, no matter who,” she took a deep breath, averting her gaze like it was a struggle to think that someone might hurt him, “no matter who does you harm, I will be there for you.”  _

Please!

_ His mouth opened, and out came more undecipherable static, like it was a foreign language completely. Something bubbled past his lips and fell into the air and it weighed so much for a cacophony of words that he couldn’t understand. _

_ “I know you can protect yourself, Link,” Mipha acknowledged. She should’ve sounded annoyed, aggravated, but she didn’t. “But you shouldn’t need to.” _

I’m not your Link!

_ “You shouldn’t need to go around protecting yourself from everything with no help,” her delicate clawed hand curled and knocked against her thigh, punctuating the end of her sentence. “And I will help you.” _

You’re dead!

_ He said something again, and Mipha shoved him playfully, though afterwards she smoothed over the area that she’d pushed with a flash of regret. She was anxious, he could tell. She usually wasn’t so rash with her actions, a shove was out of character, but he didn’t mind. If she wanted to rough him up a little to let out her frustrations then she could. _

_ “I will!” she assured him, running a palm over the elegant crest on her head and scratching a silver piece of jewelry in a nervous gesture. The stones were turquoise, with eddies and rippled patterns that betrayed a very real, valuable gemstone. They were beautiful. _

I killed you!

_ “And maybe… once this is over and without you needing to spend so much time with that Sword… things could go back to when we were young.”  _

“Link, friend!”

Help, please.

_ The edges of the memory blurred, burning at the edges and losing so much of that detail. The turquoise stones went dull and bland, silver metals rusted, the air tasted like mothballs and cloth and then it tasted like nothing at all.  _

There was a dog barking–Wolfie! It was frantic, the kind of bark he let out when he was worried, the same sort of bark he’d had when Link froze in the lake with the Guardian Stalker. 

He latched onto that memory, that lived event that he knew with all his heart was real no matter how paralyzing and fearful an experience, and hoped it pulled him out. Pulled him back, pulled him a hundred years into the future.

_ He couldn’t feel the itch of the healed skin, he couldn’t feel his muscles moving, he couldn’t hear the clicking of Vah Ruta behind them.  _

A hundred years. He’d been asleep for a hundred years.

_ The stone felt unremarkable. Was there even any stone at all? _

He needed to get back.

_ Mipha was black and white and blurry when she said in a tone that Link couldn’t hear, “We could spend some time together.” He couldn’t see her face, he couldn’t remember what color her eyes were. _

Oxygen reached his lungs, wet, dirty oxygen that tasted like rain and metal. Keep breathing, keep breathing.

“Keep breathing, friend!” Sidon. 

_ Her lips didn’t move with those words. So full of hope. What did her voice sound like again? _

Strong hands on his shoulders, shoulders that were his own now. Shoulders that carried the cloth of a navy blue hood from Kakariko and the light, noiseless stealth fabric of the Sheikah that lived there.

_ His lips didn’t move either.  _

He blinked and turned away from the Zora prince, rubbing at dry eyes and blinking away the soreness. His hands shook violently as the ball of his palms drove into his eyes.

Mipha. Mipha. Mipha. 

Wolfie barked, and Link’s head shot up. Wolfie. Wolfie. Wolfie.

“He owns a savage beast, Prince Sidon!” Muzu said, frail voice crackling with ire. He extended a finger towards his friend.

_ His friend, Mipha. _

No, that’s Wolfie. Mipha didn’t growl at old Zoran advisors when they told him he’d doom Zora’s Domain. 

Did she?

Sidon got on one knee to look at him, eyes brilliant and golden. He looked so much like his sister, Link cursed himself for not seeing it sooner. 

Did he?

_ He’d met Sidon before, even! He’d seen the resemblance side by side. _

Had he?

“Link, what is the matter?” Hands hovered around him, like they wanted to touch, to ground, but respectfully wouldn’t after their last rejection. “Are you unwell?”

“Unwell?” Muzu spat, recoiling from Wolfie’s gaze. “Look at him, he’s quivering! And look at his dog!”

“Wolfie isn’t a dog,” he whispered, the ruined tissue inside his throat against the syllables rubbing his tongue raw. He reached up to feel the left side of his face, where scars burned like they were new. He knew they weren’t. He’d woken up with them, because he’d been asleep for a hundred years.

They felt new every time he came back from a memory, though. Only two, but it was a pattern, and he was sure it was a consistent one.

He didn’t want to remember. 

A comforting blanket of a weight suddenly settled at his thigh, at his hip, squishy–no, furry. Fluffy, poofed up with rainwater. Fingers dug into the wolf hair and he resisted dropping to his knees to hide his face in it, to smell it to make sure it was real.

He didn’t want to remember if it meant forgetting which Link he was in the process. 

“Are you okay?” Prince Sidon pressed, voice so full of concern. He nodded, intentionally avoiding looking at the memorial of Mipha in the process.

Because it wasn’t a statue, it was a memorial. A grave.

Did they ever find her body?

“I remember her,” he croaked, knowing his voice was flooded with emotion like a buildup behind a dam. It was easy being expressionless in the face, but speaking was never something he was good at. Was he good at it before? This was the only memory that he remembered talking in.

Did he even talk? He didn’t hear anything, though maybe it was lost along with the small details of Mipha’s own voice. It was just as vague as his first reminder, even if it met him so much differently. 

Maybe he didn’t speak in it after all.

He hoped he did.

“What?” Muzu demanded, at the same time Wolfie startled and looked up at him. 

“Mipha,” Link choked out, fingerspelling her name and bringing his teeth forward to bite at a thumb’s nail. Did he ever have a name-sign for her like he did for his friend? 

_ His friend, Mipha. _

No, his friend Wolfie. 

“I r-remember her,” he whispered, reverence locked behind tight words that threatened to burst with noise. His voice was quiet and hoarse and almost precious, but he was also deeply terrified. He remembered something of Princess Zelda as well, and he could have lived his entire life without the knowledge that she hated him. 

Somehow, it was even worse knowing that he and Mipha had anything beyond mutual jealousy and stubborn resistance. 

“You’re lying!” the elder Zora accused, despite Prince Sidon’s protests.

“She was…” Link tore off the edge of the nail he’d been working at, earrings pressing against the side of his neck as his pointed ears flattened. The metal bit into his skin, it was warm but just the right amount of different to get his mouth moving again, just for six more words and nothing more. “She healed me. She promised to.” 

“Dishonesty!” Muzu cried again, and Link had half a mind to believe him. 

He dearly wished he was lying, but things never worked out in the way he wanted. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i always read semi-novelizations of botw and wonder how things would change if Link was reluctant to learn about the past, how things could still flow together well if he didn't actively seek out the pictures on the Sheikah Slate. that's what i'm doing here. my main purpose for this story was originally a sort-of character study for Wolfie, and how taking up the Hero's Shade role might affect him and how different he became from botw!Link because of his journey, but so far its also evolved into a study of botw!Link too. somehow. i guess it comes with wanting to make them such good buddies. 
> 
> anyways, i just wanted to tread new territory with the character. i hope it was at least interesting to make up for being so short? (the next chapter is from Wolfie's POV again, it finishes this interaction and shouldn't be as puny). you commenters got me calling Link Wild in my head so i edited this so many times just to find instances where i wrote that instead of his name, lmao. 
> 
> thank you so much for all the comments and kudos anyways, they motivate me so much to keep writing and i adore every one of y'all! <3 please have a lovely day and don't forget to take care of yourself


	7. rules are made to be broken

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i said it was going to be long but it's not actually that long.   
it felt very long to write, though, so at least there's that :'). plus y'all get two chapters in one day. 6k words in total. sue me.

“Dishonesty!”

Link’s hand was fatally cold in his fur, but his fingers were steady. Like all the blood had drained from the appendage, leaving it unable to even shake. Wolfie leaned into it heavily, hoping to warm it with a furrowed brow. Hypothermia… he knew it wasn’t that, it wasn’t cold enough here, but it was eerily similar. Too similar. And the slow, hazy way in which Link rambled with his tongue–his tongue!–only reaffirmed the comparison. 

Muzu’s voice crackled, not in the way a teenager’s might but in the way an old tree groaned under a treehouse. “Do not mistake me for a fool, Hylian! I cannot simply  _ allow  _ the King, bless his heart, to give away precious gifts to any pointy-eared weasel with a four letter name.” 

Wolfie bristled. 

Link opened his mouth to respond, but there was only a strangled whine when Sidon interjected. “Muzu, he remembers her. Surely–” 

Muzu turned a cheek. “Yes, when it is most convenient! As of now, there is no solid proof.” Thin slits for nostrils flared when the prince hissed with clenched fists. “Give me one thing! One! And I will…” the elder thought for half of a second, “yes, I will help you in your search for shock arrows to power the Beast.” 

The hand retreated from his scruff, and no sooner had words left Muzu’s mouth could Link have wrestled off his hood. It fell unceremoniously to the floor with a wet splat, and next came the bun and clay hair pieces that Paya had done in his hair during a trip to Kakariko. The clay beads were set more gently on the floor, but they clattered nonetheless.

Muzu sputtered, blue flaming his face like a bruise while Wolfie watched on in utter befuddlement. Sidon laughed, clapping his hands jovially, like he was in on some joke that the wolf hero desperately wanted the punchline for.

The Sheikah tights didn’t come off, it was one large body piece and Link probably didn’t want to undress completely in the middle of Zora’s Domain and in front of two nobles, so instead he held the Zora Heartpiece he’d been holding in a wad outwards, like he was showing Muzu why he’d taken off his clothes.

Oh. 

_ Stupid kid,  _ Wolfie thought with an amused huff. 

Link turned it upside down and slid into it, puffing out his cheeks in concentration. The shoulders rested with some difficulty, the armor not agreeing naturally at first, but soon it fit snugly against the tights underneath. The undergarment was practically molded onto his skin, anyways, being bare-chested wouldn’t have made a difference. The Heartpiece fit him like a well made glove. 

“Muzu!” the Prince opened his arms, “look.” The advisor trained his eyes on Link once more, seemingly relieved that the Hylian wasn’t naked, and though his face remained steady Wolfie could smell the shock on him. “The gift fits him perfectly, how else would it have done that if it was not made by Mipha for him?”

Link shifted and stretched fingers. Silver forearm bracers were clunkier than he was used to, and the equally as polished neck guard felt confining, but otherwise Sidon’s words rang true. It would have been an admirable piece of tight armor had not the jewelry sown in clinked with movement. 

It was not meant to be armor, though. It was the equivalent of a Hylian’s wedding suit, and something ponderous in Link’s gaze told Wolfie he thought of that as well.

Muzu didn’t utter a word. 

_ Old fool.  _ Perhaps Wolfie was being too mean, but only the goddess herself could control his thoughts. It wasn’t like he could vocalize them in any meaningful way. What was that ancient saying, _if you have nothing nice to say then don't speak at all? _Jokes on them, Wolfie could say the nastiest things without words and as long as Link didn't rat him out he would be perfectly fine.

Exasperated, Sidon dredged on, as though Muzu didn’t perfectly understand him and just refused to answer. “You have always hated Hylians. Always! Even before the Calamity. You must not have known because she thought you would criticize her for her emotions.”

Offended, the old Zora rounded on the royal. “I would never harm Lady Mipha!”

“Yes! I am aware. But now that you know, you must uphold your part of this bargain,” he leaned forward, eagerness in his eyes, and guilt hit Wolfie like a club to the face.

Sidon acted like a child, or perhaps a sheltered young adult, and he’d expected much of him when they first met. Maybe Sidon acted like that because that was exactly what he was: immature, but not in an awful way, in the way that all teenagers were.

Including Wolfie himself, when he stomped out of Uli and Rusl’s house and made his own in the grasp of an old tree because he felt like they doted on him too much. Because he wanted to be free without truly understanding just how terrible freedom could be without some sort of security. 

He missed them, Uli and Rusl. Achingly so. But now he supposed that he’d gotten his wish to grow up unchained. Which was especially ironic, considering the shackle attached to his ankle. 

Maybe he should be glad for him that Sidon hadn’t yet flown the roost. 

“Ah, yes,” Muzu snapped Wolfie out of his thoughts. He sounded defeated, like he’d lost an argument of wit instead of just been proven blatantly false. “I do not know what came over me, your highness.” A pointed tongue wetted pruning lips between those needle-teeth. “I still do not approve, but dear Mipha was wise for her age… and if it is what she would have wanted, then I suppose I will help you.” 

Sidon fist pumped, and Link pinched the bridge of his nose and let all the previous tension deflate. 

It was a deeply relatable feeling, he could practically see the tiredness and relief emanate from the hero. Wolfie hummed, and let cold silver into his fur despite the biting chill it gave his skin. 

The green Zora lifted a finger, proud chest and gills expanding with a breath, and pointed.. All three listeners followed it to its target, a mountaintop that extended a cool shadow over the third tier of the domain like a hood. It wasn’t shaped like a hood, though, perhaps more like a narrow wave. A tsunami. “There,” Muzu said, voice laced with something that sounded like nervousness, “is a multitude of shock arrows on Polymus Mountain. But, it is the territory of a mo–”

As if Muzu had summoned it, Vah Ruta trumpeted. Machinery creaked, simply adjusting once more to an elevated water level, and that would have been it had a bellow not come from the depths of Polymus Mountain. It was loud and deep and chilling, and it sent the ducks in the lake below flying into the air in fright. Zora in the circles below cried out in terror. Something white streaked across the sky. 

The telltale sizzle of electricity. One, two, three darts of pure lightning embedded into the great fin on the embellished fish that held the throne and the King upon it. One missed its mark, however, and landed dead at the entrance to Zora’s Bridge, where Dunma and Rivan managed to leap away from the area of impact right before a blinding dome erupted around the arrow. 

Where the shaft now stood, buried deep into luminous stone and opal, were burn marks upon once pristine crystal and glistening, crackling water. 

“–Monster.” Muzu finished, sounding truly sad.

Sidon, white in the face, bent down so that he could speak to Link, who stared at where the arrow had landed. Only visible was the back half, but there were no yellow gems that indicated the tip of the shock arrow had shattered and there were thin cracks in the ground, so the only logical conclusion was that the monster that fired it had strength so impressive that it’s bow could cleave through stone like flesh. “It is a lynel,” the Prince said with a grave, serious nod. “And it lives on Shatterback Point.”

Link’s ears were parallel to the side of his face, lips pursed, and he turned with a resolute glint in his eyes. 

_ You are fucking not– _

_ I will kill the L Y N E L,  _ he signed, lifting his leg and putting his foot down for emphasis. He was facing Sidon and Muzu, but Wolfie had half a mind to think he was really speaking to him.

_ Oh my fucking god,  _ the Twilit hero groaned internally, and stomped a heavy paw on the toes of Link’s tights.

_ I will!  _ Link motioned to Wolfie, eyebrows slanted angrily. He bent down to retrieve his cloak and clay beads, tucking each in their respective place carefully and lifting his hood over his head, though the beads didn’t sit exactly in the place on his sideburns that they had before.  _ This not optional, Wolfie.  _

“You will?” Sidon and Muzu asked in time. Link nodded sternly. He wasn’t mad, the stubborn set to his jaw betrayed that emotion, nor was he frustrated. Frustrated Link kicked rocks down mountainsides and threw pebbles at unsuspecting bokoblins. He was just… 

Just.

It reminded Wolfie too much of himself promising Renaldo that he’d trek up Death Mountain and face the aggressive, dangerous Gorons that lived there without any protection other than the measly gear he’d had on him at the time. That burn scar he got from the journey still stung under pressure, even concealed by a fur coat. He’d gotten off lucky, too, only with a crippling fear of suffocation from almost inhaling smoke one to many times and a mark on his skin. 

Wolfie desperately didn’t want Link to add a new one to his collection. He was too young to charge headfirst into battles with lynels. He was too young for most of this shit, but this was where he drew the line.

_ I will,  _ Link answered, and Wolfie knew that he couldn’t stop him, even if he could chew him out with words instead of just looks. 

“Good,” Muzu answered, seemingly unperturbed by his lack of self-preservation. “I estimate that about fifteen shock arrows will be needed to defeat Ruta and every evil inside of her, but perhaps twenty would be a smarter goal. I will tell the King you two are ready when you have collected twenty shock arrows and done any other tasks that are deemed necessary, yes?” 

“Yes!” Sidon said, oblivious as well. “Link, there is a small house on the East Lake Reservoir dock, it is where I used to train for swimming and diving as a fry. I will take shelter there, as I cannot accompany you to defeat the lynel on Shatterback Point for…” he at least had the decency to look guilty and apologetic, “obvious reasons. I’m sorry.”

_ No issue,  _ Link said with a small smile, and Sidon patted him on the shoulder as he took his leave.

“Oh, and Link?” the Prince asked, concern blazing in those golden orbs. It startled Wolfie how one look could rattle him to his core. “There is a reason why it is called Shatterback Point. Please be cautious.” There was no reply, he rather watched Sidon dive into the lake below from the railing. 

“I have to,” he explained with his damaged voice after some time to his friend. Gone was the cold mask he put up around others, replaced with a wistful sort of dread. “It’s going to hurt them overwise.”

Dunma had called over the other guards in the Domain to extract the arrow from the ground. He knew that’s where Link was looking.

_ I know,  _ Wolfie said to himself, meeting Link’s eyes with haunted ones, and it hurt more to see an optimistic spark in the boy’s than whatever he was expecting. Regret, bullheadedness, overconfidence, anything would have been better. 

“You’ll fight it with me though, right?” It was phrased like a question, and the tone was wrought with uncertain want, but the underlying message was a desperate plea.  _ Please fight the lynel with me. Please. _

It hurt Wolfie more than anything to turn his head from that hope, but he couldn’t give him what he wanted. He couldn’t climb that mountain with Link, he just  _ couldn’t _ watch him do that to himself. And maybe– maybe if Wolfie refused outright, Link wouldn’t go at all. That would be clever of him, and Wolfie knew that he was sharp under all that chaos.

“Right?”

_ I’m sorry,  _ he shook his head, and sat where he was, unmoving. A statue. The scent of Link’s brief betrayal was quickly washed out by stubbornness and the rain, but it still burned his nostrils like an iron brand. Wolfie didn’t look at him as he walked away, but his ears did twitch when boots marked the hero’s departure. 

When he did eventually turn to search for him there was no trace left of him, and never before had Wolfie felt so unbelievably useless as both a friend and a spirit guide. 

_ It’s for his own safety, _ Wolfie assured himself. He knew Link well, probably better than Link himself thought he knew him, and Wolfie was convinced he wouldn’t leave the Domain without him by his side. He was clingy and anxious about seperation like that. Once time Wolfie had left to hunt mushrooms and truffles in the night, making sure Epona kept watch over their open camp, and he’d arrived back to Link completely tearing apart the woods in his panicked searching. 

It was a pack’s nature to stick together, and the wild hero certainly knew the rules of mother nature. He breathed it in every day, if flowers filled his lungs and some bloomed in his heart Wolfie wouldn’t be surprised. 

Link wouldn’t go off alone. He just wouldn’t.

And yet.

* * *

From the shadow of the mountain, it observed its small stretch of territory. Really, its land reached far beyond the peak of this mountain, but here it remained content. It did not want to start a feud with the blue giant near the west lake, and while it would be an easy battle, that pathetic circle of land was not worth the effort. 

It peered over the mountain at the brown-stoned beast that resided in the artificial lake of those two-legged fish. That thing had been driving away its prey for as long as it could remember. Now the only somewhat filling thing that it encountered were birds that flew overhead. Hardly enough for a large, chambered stomach such as its. 

Even so, its aim was impeccable, and a flock of ducks fell to the ground like stones when it unleashed two lightning arrows into their formation, electricity chaining in the wet of the rain and scoring it a meal. 

It lifted a hefty yet slightly undernourished body off the ground with a gruff exhale, fire soothing the back of its throat with a few sweltering licks. As it bent down on one knee to retrieve its boon, giant hoof carving a dent in the mud, a tree rustled.

As soon as the noise appeared, it was gone again, replaced by the semi-silence of the storm. It rested a colossal bow–a weapon that used to be a sturdy tree trunk with a drawstring made from thick rope–against its thick back and drew its equally as foreboding blade. It studied the pine tree that had moved with curious eyes.

There used to be two yellow, crackling arrows stuck into the fragile bark. Where had they gone?

It made its way steadily over to the location, cavernous nostrils sniffing the air. Smoke plumed from them, a sign of irritation as something unfamiliar wafted into the air. The scent was something similar to the orange foxes that dared venture into its land, but muskier, somehow similar to that of the two-legged dwellers below. Less aquatic in nature, though. Something more dangerous, a threat. It had been a long while since something like that had come near. 

Another tree moved, and it swiftly turned to the new discovery. Again, it found nothing but more missing arrows. More and more of its stash went missing, each time a mere movement left in the thief’s wake, and aggravation began to set in. An inhale stoked the flames in its belly, and a fearsome, vast exhale set the field and colorful, coral-esque shrubbery alight. 

A nearly inaudible sound was made, like a startled mouse, and a shield barely covered its bicep from a searing explosion’s impact which stained the stone and slightly rusted metal with ash. It bellowed, rearing onto its very hind legs and slamming them into the soft earth. Emerald eyes met the cornflower of its assailant.

In its tiny, useless seeming hands was a decorated bow and a sturdy pigeon-fletched arrow. How something so delicate could cause that loud of an explosion, it would never know. Its assailant stood on a large boulder, soft, deformed hooves digging into the treacherously wet stone. It would indeed be something similar to the fish creatures if it weren’t for a golden mane poking through a navy hood, and a regal green pelt that draped over its shoulders and hugged its body like a second skin. Was that leather armor? Resourceful, then.

The small thing loosed a savage snarl back with its frame squared in a threat, the response surprisingly feral. The two legged ones were usually meek and docile, afraid of the world, but this one was seeming less and less like them the longer it stood its ground and waited for the terrible beast to make the first blow. 

The attacker dodged its furious swipes with only a hair in between itself and sure death. It surged onto its nimble feet and jumped off the boulder. 

_ Weak,  _ it spat, even as it staggered at the unnaturally fast volley of arrows that plowed through its hide just enough to hurt. And so it began, the lynel exhilarated to finally battle after a lifetime of dull victories. 

It would crush this little wolf under its thumb and revel in the new taste of its meat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sometimes these boys hurt me to write but whattya know. gotta let your kids be dumbasses or else they won't learn, and trust me they got lots to learn. 
> 
> i keep making promises for future chapters but trust me when i say the zora's domain arc won't last for more than 2 more chapters. i'm at the point where the zora's domain theme is appearing in my dreams bc i listen to it while writing and that's too much dedication for me so i don't think i could handle dragging it out any longer. 
> 
> stay safe! black lives matter.


	8. atop shatterback point, alone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i apologize for leaving y'all hanging for so long, my only excuse is that school hit me like a bag of bricks and procrastination is the only thing i'm competent at. shoutout to my wonderful asshole of a girlfriend who googled stuff for me and then called me an idiot because i, apparently, don't know how google works. i love you. 
> 
> CONTENT WARNING for gore
> 
> i'm not sure how graphic it really is (which is why i didn't add the archive warning. if it's awful please let me know, i don't want to write unreadable things) since i'm relatively desensitized to stuff like that, but better be safe than sorry. also, yall finally get that Wolfie & Sidon content that i'll definitely be writing more of. enjoy!

Zora’s Domain was silent.

Night, Wolfie quickly learned, did not mean quiet in such a vast wilderness as Link’s Hyrule. Crickets sang, fireflies whispered, fox paws pounded against grass in search of an unfortunate prey. Noise was a constant. 

In his own Hyrule, draped under the cover of dusk and stars even when the light had been restored, nights were noiseless. Bulbin and bokoblin were nocturnal there, eyes reflecting light like cats and prowling for anything. They’d been less frequent after the Twilight, yes, but they were still there. They drove animals into daytime roaming and stillness. 

The first time it had been completely still here was when a blood moon passed over Dueling Peaks stable, and everyone held their breath as malice built in the air like smoke and embers. Zora’s Domain was the second.

The nights here were utterly devoid of any noise. Even cautious Kakariko, which put out every lantern except for those in the centermost of the village in order to not attract keese, wasn’t as quiet with its windchimes and midnight conversations. 

Zora’s Domain, from the second they stepped foot on the crystal under the light of the moon, had the quietest nights Wolfie had ever heard, even coming from such an ill-recovered Hyrule as his own. Comparatively, this one was apocalyptic, and that fact hit him strongly sometimes in the wake of nature thriving everywhere else. It was easy to forget that the entire continent only housed maybe a couple hundred people total when forests more lucious than Faron and trees taller than entire houses were commonplace. Every place was Ordona Woods, every mountain Death Mountain. It was so easy to forget that nearly every village was something like the Temple of Time. 

To know this was the future. To know all of Zelda’s pursuits would be for naught. Ganon would return and destroy, no matter how many thousands of years passed. 

Maybe that's why, after searching for Link for nearly an hour, he sat with Sidon overlooking East Reservoir Lake to watch the Divine Beast ruminate. The downpour was atrocious here, it pounded on the roof of the fishing house mercilessly and without pause, and occasionally a peal of thunder split the drumming. 

“You aren’t with the Champion,” Sidon observed, concerned when Wolfie shook the rainwater from his pelt and sat underneath the small porch. “Is he well?”

Wolfie shrugged. Hylia, he hoped Link was well. Probably blowing off steam by decimating a poor hillside with remote bombs or launching fallen trees into orbit with stasis. There were no bokoblins to throw pebbles at, after all. 

Link hadn’t gone far, though. It wasn’t in his blood.

“Hm.”

And that was seemingly that. Conversation ended, as it were with only one true participant. Sidon didn’t understand his language quite like Link, couldn’t catch emotions and turn them into words with a unique voice. Couldn't carry up a dialogue as if he could really hear him. 

Maybe that was a blessing, because if he could talk now he would say that_ Champion_ was an unusually pompous title, and that was coming from someone dubbed _the Hero of Light, Sir Link of Ordona_. Seven words too many to describe what the Hero’s job was: protect. 

He thought Sidon might relate, being a Prince. He remembered Ralis trying to make light of it at his coronation all those years ago. 

Really, only one year ago. 

“You know,” Sidon started up. “When I was trying to see if you could really help, I was so confused about you and Master Link.”

Wolfie looked up at him skeptically. He didn’t take notice. 

“Your teamwork is truly admirable, and he talks as if he can hear you speak. I remember a time when I was very young, you understand, of someone quite like you accompanying him before.” Sidon smoothed down his knees with gentle claws, leaning back on the wall. His eyes were trained on Ruta as she spouted water and occasionally moved the reservoir like it was as easy as tipping a bowl of water back and forth. “I remember asking Father for a retriever because of it. He learned sign because of that particular question. I had trouble speaking back then. So imagine my astonishment when I see Link’s same companion a hundred years later, as if no time had passed at all. Are Hylian dogs really so loyal?” 

Wolfie looked away, swallowing something that, for once, wasn't a protest against being called a dog. He didn’t remember anything a hundred years ago. He truly was only attending stuffy coronations and wrestling goats just a year ago, newly nineteen and trying to bribe Telma into letting him drink anything but milk at her bar. He certainly wasn’t guiding this new Link as a wolf.

“I never thought you had a name, you seemed too... otherworldly as a child. Wolfie,” the Prince hummed, pressing two thumbs together. He chuckled. “Did you choose that name?” 

_ No,  _ he snorted. A tail thumped on the ground to garner the Zora’s attention, and he shook his head. There, he could converse a little despite his muteness and complete confusion.

“I wonder. What name would you have chosen, Master Wolfie?” 

It was his turn to be quiet like Zora’s Domain, wondering that as well. A friend’s name teetered on wolfish lips, as if he could really speak it if he were so able and brave, but even two and a half years after her departure it hurt to consider saying out loud. 

What name would he have given himself if not Link, a name that didn’t quite fit him right anymore? 

“Sometimes I wonder that too,” Sidon smiled. “I think I would’ve liked to name myself. Imagine all the possibilities! Though I don’t think I would trust fry-me to pick a name that I wouldn’t be embarrassed of later.” 

_ Oh?  _

“If I were to choose right now, though, I think I would name myself to honor Mipha. I miss her now more than ever.” He looked at Wolfie then, gaze bittersweet. Sidon had so much time to mourn her, Princess Mipha’s death was an old wound, he could tell. It was scabbed and healed, but like all wounds if you picked at it it would bleed. Wolfie and Link had been doing nothing but picking since they'd arrived. “Mikau, maybe. After the lake she taught me to swim up waterfalls in.” 

Mikau felt familiar in a primal way. The same way the words  _ sun  _ and  _ sky  _ felt familiar. 

“Do you know how to swim?” A clear change of subject. Both men were grateful for it.

_ Not without Zora armor,  _ Wolfie concluded after some contemplation. He’d tried in the little river that ran through Ordon multiple times, but the concept of being underwater with nothing between his lungs and the current but his own mouth frightened him a bit. That, and he didn’t like closing his eyes when his hearing was so muffled. At least, now with a dog’s ears, that fear was mitigated. 

He managed another shrug.

Sidon laughed, a bright sound. “Oh, what does that mean–”

An unusually loud crack of lightning got both of them on their feet, heads turned to the crest of Polymus Mountain, and suddenly Zora’s Domain wasn’t so silent. Exclamations of shock poured from the lips of many Zora onlookers, even a Goron who’d been resting in the Inn revealed themselves to gape at the mountain. Maybe they expected another volley of shock arrows, maybe they expected a landslide, but that bolt lingered far longer than a strike without a purposeful conductor. Nothing more.

Smoke blew from Shatterback Point when the lightning disappeared and quickly faded away with the rain, nearly invisible in the cloud cover but just as vivid as that electricity to his eyes. Dread ran through Wolfie’s veins sharper than a darknut’s blade and turned his paws numb. 

And then the chimes came. One, two, three. Four, five, six. Each flowing downhill like a river and soothing yet so, so urgent. It swelled in his chest in the same way Mikau did, but with it washed up fear that gripped him so tightly that he could feel his throat close.

He didn’t notice the triangle shaped itch on the top of his paw as he let the Twilight take him. 

* * *

Link pressed himself against the boulder, trying to steady his heavy breaths. His chest heaved with exhaustion, his arms were going to fall off. The lynel had nicked him multiple times, wounds that should’ve just been scrapes bleeding profusely, and he couldn’t do anything but run when the creature decided to charge him. At first he’d stood headfirst and parried the blow, putting all of his strength into driving those horns anywhere but through his body. It was an instinct. He’d managed to throw the lynel’s head to the side and avoid being impaled, but his shield arm felt like it shattered along with his spiked boko shield. He knew it wasn’t really fractured, he could still move it even though it felt like every nerve was on fire while doing so, but he wouldn’t doubt it if it was and adrenaline was the only thing keeping it mobile. 

His body fit into the cranny of the stone perfectly, but soon the lynel would smell him and his blood, and he’d have to move again. 

Surely enough, the top of the rock was sliced off like butter behind him. Link discarded his injured arm and hefted his sledgehammer as high as it would go with the impairity. With a yell, he chucked it at the thing’s head, which ended up knocking it off balance for a millisecond. It gave him the time to get the hell out of the way of two wide swings.

He mourned the weapon when it cracked and splintered against the lynel’s shoulder, it was the only thing he felt good mining with. Bombs just sent amber and flint scattering everywhere. 

Tears welled up in his eyes involuntarily when he stumbled on his charred leg. Shock arrows were unpleasant in the rain. He knew that, he swore he did when he’d taken Wolfie’s good, silent advice on the road to Zora’s Domain to actually think before sprinting head first into battle, but he didn’t expect it to effectively stab him every time he so much as moved his knee. 

He wiped tears away with a clothed shoulder and desperately pulled out his knight’s broadsword. Even though his shield arm was effectively unusable, a fact that brought his mind eerily close to the feeling of being on Vah Ruta and Mipha healing the same arm, he still held a neon guardian’s shield in front of him to block the incoming arrows. Yellow crystals shattered and released the lightning on impact, which coursed through the middle but dispersed with a defeated sigh when the blue holographic light absorbed it without issue. 

Link’s good ankle groaned, twisted at an odd angle as the projectiles pushed him back, back, back, dangerously close to the edge of the cliff. What was left of the arrows’ shafts came dangerously close to grazing his nose and neck, suspended in the Sheikah Tech. This shield was the strongest he owned, and now he was slightly grateful that the wooden one had broken before the arrows came. 

The lynel huffed and paced backwards.

Wolfie could’ve immobilized the thing easily. He was fast and bringing down it’s ankles would’ve been child’s play to the wolf. The thought might’ve felt bitter if Link wasn’t ninety-nine percent sure the taste in his mouth was just blood. He spat it and pushed off the same foot to get closer to the lynel as it put it’s behemoth bow back on its back.

He’d quickly learned that long arms were both a blessing and a curse, the lynel had a wide range and nearly nothing was out of reach to it, but if Link got right up at its flank or chest, it couldn’t do much except leap back or bring its hooves down. Even then, the hoof attack was telegraphed greatly, and there was plenty of time to retreat out of the way. 

The hilt of the sword creaked against the creature’s hide, not enough to roll Link’s wrist or make him lose his grip, but just enough to let him know that this weapon wouldn’t last through the fight, either. He really loved this sword, too. 

Purple blood sprayed hot on his face, coppery on his lips, sticky in his hair. It felt strangely vindicating. The lynel reared up on it’s hind legs like expected and the hero scampered back. Mud splattered on his once-green-dyed hylian tunic as heavy hooves decimated the spot where he once stood. 

Through a flash of lightning and a sudden onslaught of rain, it fixed him with hungry forest eyes. Despite the deep exhaustion in his bones, he stared right back. The lynel’s look itself was a threat, a promise, but those quickly became dull when the land itself set out to kill you at nearly every turn. 

Hyrule was beautiful, Hyrule was gentle and welcoming and utterly wonderful, but it was also cruel. Like any teacher would be when your lesson was survival. Anything less was a death sentence, and Link didn’t hate the woods and grass for that. They were only preparing him.

The air fizzled and sparked against his soldier’s broadsword, warning him of a potential strike. 

The storm, though? He was quickly getting sick and tired of that. 

Dodging out of the way again, this time by ducking and springing back, sent him tumbling to the ground from dizziness. He let out a livid growl when the lynel emitted something that sounded like laughter.

“Fuck you,” he spat at it, voice bubbling and popping quietly like magma against a stone esophagus. He shook like a leaf when he stood up. “Just give–” 

It charged. The monster gripped the grass and propelled itself forward. Link moved, heaving a tasteless breath as his burnt leg twisted awkwardly, and led it crashing into the stone that it had cut before.  _ Karma.  _

The grass looked so pretty set alight as the great monster let out its anger, painting the air hot and red and golden. Rain doused it just as it always did, fire always quaked in the face of the downpour, but Link was used to fleeting things. 

The sword dissolved into the Slate in the middle of a pop of electricity. His arm complained sharply at the harsh movement of pulling out the paraglider and throwing himself on the flame to catch the brief updraft. Paragliding up or down so suddenly would probably ruin his arms in the long run, but he just needed to live  _ now.  _ He would deal with whatever repercussions came with using his mangled limb later. 

Hair hung in the air, slow in air that moved like water. Eyes focused like the scope on his Slate. Everything flooded in detail after detail, every fold and scar on the lynel’s skin, every hair in it’s wild mane, every blade of grass. Pine needles rustled softly in the storm, each raindrop like a small note of music against the dark green and like a bell against the grey of dead lawn when they hit instead of hanging in the air, motionless, like little crystals. Everything smelled like dirt and rock and nature, and though the rain was dismal it was strangely beautiful now that he could see it the way it saw itself. His lungs breathed in clean air, washed by the water, and he took just a millisecond to catch his breath. 

To him, though, it felt like five minutes. 

God, he was exhausted.

Link grit his teeth, steeling against the agony in the torn arm so that it wouldn’t spasm when he knocked an arrow and let it fly true. Perhaps it was a little off, but a chime played in his head anyways. One, two, three, the hemp bowstring thumping against the crook of that broken arm like a rhythm. 

The arrows pierced right below the beast’s eye, one had actually found its mark and sank into the sclera. A howl tore from the creature’s throat, rough and surprised. Bass timed with thunder, pounding Link’s eardrums. The noise was slow like the rest of the world, and it hurt.

_ Pain into strength,  _ something whispered in the back of his mind, strong and gruff and rightfully imperious. This was something he  _ knew.  _ Like a mantra, a motto, an order. 

The lynel lowered it’s head to try to claw out the shafts, great shoulders hunched and sword discarded. Link took the opportunity and let the paraglider go from where he’d instinctively reached up for it when he was done shooting. 

Whichever goddess was looking down on his fight must’ve finally taken pity on him, because his legs didn’t crack on impact when he landed directly on the lynel’s back. He grabbed a fistful of mane and stumbled into a straddle, feeling the thing’s muscles build up and twitch. It was quickly tearing his arrows from its eyes and it wouldn’t be so oblivious to him anymore. 

He resummoned the broadsword, which practically glowed in the dark atmosphere, and buried it as deep into the lynel’s flesh as he could with one arm. Monster blood seeped through the edges, quickly washing away with the rain, but glittering darkly all the same. 

His arm was definitely broken after his paragliding stunt.

The sword sparked right as the lynel started jerking. On instinct, his knees tightened to the thing’s flanks like he was taming a rowdy horse instead of holding on for dear life. The sword was a good handle, every push driving the blade into its shoulders. Surely it must’ve been a splinter to the great beast normally, but it hissed with electricity and scorched fur around it. 

A metal splinter, maybe. Those were painful enough to warrant such a hysteric reaction.

What Link didn’t expect, though, was for the lynel to raise its entire hindquarters and fling him off like he was nothing more than a flea. His shield went scattering, arrows fell from his quiver and cracked against the ground, and his body hit the dirt with a skid. He could feel ribs crunch, and wind rushed out of his lungs desperately, like a trapped animal leaping for an opened cage door. 

Link rolled so his face wasn’t pressed in the dirt, wheezing for breath and sucking in water as a wonderful return. In, out. In, out. In, out and it still wasn’t enough. 

Light broke the clouds, and something pure white speared the ground. Searing heat hit the back of his head, and soon after the boiling ricochet came a great crescendo of thunder. The lynel’s body ruptured and collapsed with knees in the grass. Smoked curled in the air gracefully before disappearing. The hero tried to clap his hands over his ears before the din came, but it didn’t matter. Eyes squeezed shut at the pressure on his sensitive eardrums, pointed tips and lips quivering.

It took an embarrassing amount of time to remember how to breathe, and fists grabbed grass like he was just learning it again. Link opened his eyes to a charred mess and a corpse when he stopped seeing spots. He held down the vomit with hands around his throat and looked away. 

“Okay,” he whispered to himself, tasting the metallic air, but only ended up nearly coughing up a lung. He could feel the sandpaper vibration of the words, but he couldn’t hear them. Only his heart beating a drum in his head. “Okay, okay, okay,” he repeated like a mantra, desperately wishing for his hearing to return to something other than ringing.

Worried, he reached up to feel the long slopes of his ears, only to hiss and retract his hand from the right one. There was a chunk missing, right where the skin was most vulnerable, and further investigation revealed thin lines of blood trailing from both. 

_ Amazing,  _ he thought enthusiastically. He didn’t know what was wrong with him, but apparently he wouldn’t be hearing for a while.  _ Thank you. This is just what I needed.  _

With an unreasonable amount of difficulty, Link rolled over so he could use his good arm to push himself off the ground. 

Well, try to. His legs gave out the minute he put pressure on them. They felt thick like chu jelly but also about as stable, ready to explode any minute. He only barely caught himself from crashing into the burnt grass again, and even then he couldn’t hold himself and all the clothes on his back up with just one arm. 

The first fat drop of rain directly on his nose, felt both horrible and refreshing. The little droplets at least distracted him from the dull pistoning in his head and the knowledge that eventually, in a couple minutes, all his adrenaline would wear off. 

Yeah, that would suck. He was pretty sure he broke more than a couple bones. 

A hand reached down, patting the Slate still securely attached to his hip with that twine cord. He thumbed the screen, letting his head rest on the mud when he found there were no cracks or dents. One thing wasn’t broken. Bones were replaceable, the Slate was not. 

It was hard to untie a knot with clumsy fingers. And only five of them.

_ At least I have five.  _

Everything felt warm, even under cold rain. He navigated the touchscreen blindly, not daring to hold the fairly heavy piece of tech above his face for fear of dropping it right on his nose and breaking one more thing. He jammed his thumb down on the button he was searching for, seeing the blue glow of it against his glove first so he could confirm it was the right one. 

The Slate vibrated six times, and he knew the notes that erupted from it weren’t very pleasant to the Hylian ear. Screechy and splitting and the tune itself was reasonably creepy, but it was noticeable. 

Wolfie howled it at the moon sometimes.

_ Goddess,  _ he breathed silently with his mouth barely moving.  _ Let him hear me.  _ Eyelashes fluttered, but he stubbornly refused to give into sleep even as his breathing somewhat stabilized into a wheeze and not hyperventilation. Sleeping would only make everything worse. 

When the pain came and drew stubborn silver from his eyes, he thought he felt someone holding his hand and a gentle body pressed against his own.  _ It will be okay,  _ she mumbled without noise or any indication to even imply that she was speaking words, but he knew that’s what she meant.  _ You will be okay.  _

There was a little regret in Princess Zelda’s presence, but it gave him enough to keep eyes open until Wolfie arrived with black particles and, a couple minutes that felt like an eternity later, the whole Domain. 

He laughed, a little delirious, and reached up for his friend. He wasn’t sure if he was crying from amusement or pain when the wolf refused to let Sidon carry him and instead only allowed him to drape the hero over his back. 

The Princess left then, perhaps scared away by the people, but that was okay. Link could feel her in Wolfie’s fur, in the dips of the terrain as he picked down the side of Shatterback Point as cautiously yet quickly as he could. Link could feel her the way everything hurt a little less when sleep did eventually drag him down, and he hoped he saw her in his dreams. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ooo what could Wolfie have been doing 100 years ago? ;) also the song Link plays is the song of healing, because i thought it was too cool of a cameo in TP to just forget about. 
> 
> i'm debating on dipping into some LU territory with this fic, but it's just a thought since this has also kind of evolved into my own AU in my head (and i wasn't familiar with jojo's works when i posted a good chunk of this so no connection was planned/intended). indecisive i remain. 
> 
> hopefully there won't be so long between the next chapter. sorry again, lmao.


	9. orange and blue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WE ARE BACK IN BUSINESS. 
> 
> me: hopefully i wont take so long on the next chapter  
also me: *leaves for like a month* 
> 
> LMAO SORRY. enjoy!!

Wolfie waited on his bed as the sun set. Red and orange breathed stunning life into the blue of the Domain, a blue that was once fascinating and graceful but now tasted like weight and drowning. There was an iron in his mouth, something that held his tongue down like iron boots sunk Hylian feet into a lakebed’s floor. 

He had half a mind to pry the Sheikah Slate from Link’s curled fingers, where it remained tucked possessively ever since he passed out, and take a picture of the dusk. With it brought a unique kind of serenity, now that they were here in the Domain. Usually it would trigger a measure of distress; stalmonsters were unpleasant and if you travelled in the open for too long any hope of sleep would be dashed. They were easy foes, but they always came in triplets or quadruplets. 

Now, with the knowledge that Zora’s Domain was safer than dips and heights that even the Slate couldn’t name, Wolfie stared at the brilliant oranges that painted the sky and lightened yellowing grass. Orange was a wistful color, it reminded him too much of fiery hair and cheeky eyes and the feeling of losing everything in place of a victory, but now he could associate it with something more.

Pumpkins nestled in neat rows, stems forming a nice hollow circle. Ale snuck past adults and into rented rooms. Striped cats and the fur of one particularly chatty squirrel who had a bone to pick with an equally particular goat. Ancient technology fading away to blue, almost a taunt had it not been lacking the necessary merit and emotion. 

Hair and goodbyes that only registered once doors were locked and closed was just one of an abundance of orange things, and now Wolfie could mark down sunsets in a Hyrule more than ten thousand years senior.

It was a nice reprieve from the purple and gold twilight in his own. That was repressed and regal, this was uncaring and utterly wild. Abundant in everything, screaming to share it’s color with the people below. He wondered if that same sun would be merciful at a place like Arbiter’s Grounds or even more strenuous. 

Yes, a picture would’ve been nice. But, Wolfie thought as the orange finally sunk behind the neverending, uneven horizon and the reflection disappeared from his eyes, he could at least remember such a small moment. It was an ordinary moment for people like the Zora, who didn’t spare the sunset a second glance and went about their day celebrating the Shatterback Tyrant’s downfall. Wolfie would surely see a serene sunset again, one without the fear of stalmonsters, but never quite alone like this.

At least, he hoped. 

As if in response to his wonderings, Link’s fingers drifted from where they protected the Slate like a dragon it’s horde, and twitched. His lips mumbled something silent and then fell closed again as if nothing significant had happened at all. 

Wolfie draped a tail over him, not daring to lay down and take up even more of the waterbed that was barely big enough for Link himself to sleep on, starfished like he was. 

The Slate remained orange, glowing steadily against scarred cheeks and hair pulled tightly into a braided bun. Though the centermost blue ring of the Sheikah emblem had dimmed, it remained a potent nightlight when the lanterns were put out one by one. Nialei, the sweet medic who talked in an aged voice about radishes and salves while treating nasty burns without a flinch, had bid him a considerate goodnight when she blew the last light out. Wolfie caught how she shook her head, ruffled fins swaying, and muttered something that sounded like  _ silly dog.  _

And so he waited on the bed, tail covering Link’s chest, with eyes that were tired but too restless to close. He blamed it on the awful stench of salmon and durian seeds, but he knew that there was something else tugging at his mind relentlessly. He avoided it with a huff.

When the pale moon–which had forty dark craters and fifteen bright spots; yes, he resorted to counting them–had moved enough to no longer be visible from the open window of the infirmary, Sidon opened the door shyly. On his back was a pack of something that clinked and he rested what looked like a set of wicked weapons against the frame of the door. The sword was flat and shaped like a tapered fan, the shield had three prongs on its face, and the bow looked heavy and had a loop for a handguard.

“How’s he fairing?” the Prince asked in a hushed tone, pulling a chair carefully out from under a desk and sitting on it. It was almost comical how small the thing was for him, it was like watching an adult sit at the kiddie’s dinner table.

_ Well enough,  _ Wolfie replied in his head, but managed a pretty good shrug in order to tell Sidon.  _ He’s never taken his time on recovery. No doubt he’ll be up within the next few hours, demanding to be let on board Ruta.  _

“And how’s his ears?” Though he was talking to him, Sidon’s concerned gaze never left the younger hero. “I’m sorry Nialei couldn’t do much for them, knowledge on Hylian anatomy was sparse even before the Calamity.” 

Again, Wolfie shrugged. 

“Something about ruptured eardrums, she said. It’s best he sleeps through it. Apparently they can be rather painful.”

He nodded at that once with a barely concealed wince. He knew a man in the royal guard who had gotten too close to the prototype of a Goron cannon and lost some of his hearing for it. He moaned about headaches and dizziness right up until they’d treated it as best they could, and afterwards too. 

Sidon continued after a moment of surprisingly comfortable silence. “It’ll return next month.” 

Wolfie raised an eyebrow.

“The ‘Shatterback Tyrant’,” he said with quotes drawn in the air, and then elaborated. “Or, the lynel. I think it’s silly to give it a name. That’ll only give it more power over us when it does return.” 

_ Ah, yes.  _ Wolfie did wince then, averting his eyes.  _ The lynel that I should’ve helped kill. _

Sidon chuckled. “You know, Muzu started that whole tyrant thing. He’s become the greatest preacher of Link’s deeds in such a short amount of time. Giving Seggin a run for his flippers, he is. I don’t think he expected Link to really off the thing.” 

Guilt tasted a lot like silent shrooms. 

“I’m stalling,” Sidon blurted, interrupting Wolfie’s thoughts. He reached for the pack slung over his shoulders and slowly opened it with a raised hand. The latter movement was in response to an instinctive raise of hackles. Too many times had people drawn a shiv at him from a seemingly innocuous pouch. “Here,” the Prince widened the mouth of the leather bag. 

Inside was a ribbed horn, three hooves, and two bundles of five shock arrows which had their tips covered with a thick cloth. Wolfie could tell that they were electric from that alone, nevermind the feeling of ionized air that surged when the sack was opened. He looked up at Sidon with questioning eyes. 

“I went back up the mountain to retrieve these and those weapons,” he nodded towards the sword, shield, and bow against the wall. “He earned these, I didn’t want them to be forgotten. I would have taken more of the lynel itself, I hear it’s meat is more nourishing than it’s marrow, but… well.” There needed no more elaboration to that statement. The lynel itself was a charred husk on the ground, a sword in an impossibly worse shape stabbed through its shoulder blades. It was easy to put two and two together.

Wolfie hoped Link could hear well after something like that. A cannon was nothing compared to a thunderclap of that magnitude. 

Sidon lifted one hoof, roughly covered in scratches supposedly from dissection and dented from whatever the lynel had gotten up to in life, and placed it delicately in the center of his palm. He flared his fingers outward and jerked his wrist dramatically like he expected something to happen.

There was an awkward pause.

“Is this not how you put things in the Sheikah Slate?” the Zora asked Wolfie incredulously, cheeks blue. 

Wolfie shook his head rapidly, holding in a guffaw. 

“How, then?!” 

He lifted a paw and waved it lamely, hoping it somewhat resembled a dismissive gesture. He couldn’t photograph the material with the slate, register it, and then dissolve it with paws, and if he was being honest he didn’t really have the expertise to teach Sidon how to do it himself. Link tried the best he could to talk through his processes when he did try to teach him at first, but Wolfie couldn’t understand anything of what came out of his mouth. Half the time he thought Link didn’t either, judging by the way he would jumble up words like he didn’t actually know what something was called. 

Sidon just shook his head, shoulders slumping. He put the lynel hoof back into the bag and flipped over the cover. “One day… one day I will understand that technology. One day!” 

_ Sure,  _ Wolfie said to himself.  _ You’d be further along than me.  _

“I have a feeling that old shrine in the plaza is going to change sometime soon, too. Orange is my least favorite color.” Sidon said the name of the color with a tsk in his throat, like even the thought of the hue makes him aggravated. “Fleet-lotus seeds get orange when they die. The smell is terrible for me, I couldn’t imagine what they’d do to a wolf’s nose.”

Usually Wolfie would be happy about not being called a dog. Something to do with his pride or whatever, he couldn’t actually remember why he kept up the bit anymore even if the annoyance was still present. Now, though, he was content to add rotten fleet-lotus seeds to his list of things that are orange.

It was strange, remembering everything that was your least favorite color, but it helped. Maybe he’d send a letter to Sidon if– _ when– _ he could write something with his hands. Or maybe he’d slowly convince Link to actually learn to read Hylian so he could send it for him. 

Sidon reached out, hesitant and fingers twitchy, to pet Wolfie’s head. He wasn’t met with lifting lips or a puffed mane, only a quiet exhale when his palm landed on the beast’s forehead. 

_ Only you and Link,  _ he thought. There was one other person, but the twilight had passed. Wolfie was done thinking about her tonight. 

Sidon smiled gratefully, and whispered goodnight to both of them before leaving. His delivery was complete, now it was time to get some rest. Wolfie silently wished him good dreams as well. He could hear the same weight in Sidon’s footsteps that was in his tired eyelids.

The door closed with a click, and he rested his chin on Link’s thigh, curled around him and his ribs halfway hanging off the side of the mattress. He fell asleep like that, snuffed out like the Domain’s yellow lanterns.

* * *

He woke up before it got light again, though there was a certain blueness to the sky which cried out that the darkness wouldn’t remain too long. 

The first thing he noticed was that he wasn’t being shoved off the side of the waterbed anymore by a hero that took up more space than he really needed, but that seemed trivial compared to his second realization that he was alone. 

To put it shortly, Wolfie almost panicked. The Sheikah Slate was whirring on the messy blankets, blue alight in the center telling him that it’d been activated recently. The contents of Sidon’s bag were gone as well. The lynel’s weapons, too. 

There were no signs of a struggle. If Link had been taken, his captor wouldn’t have allowed him time to register the new materials and weapons. Additionally, he noticed a soldier’s broadsword dumped where the flat-edged stone blade had rested.

He made sure his teeth were gentle when he wrapped his jaw around the Slate’s glowing handle after inhaling Link’s scent. The metal’s flavor was peculiar, if something could taste both ancient then the Sheikah Slate managed. Invisible dust coated his tongue, even if the thing was teeming with life and warmth. 

Wolfie found him on Ruto Precipice’s highest peak, a displaced rock acting as a short stool and soaked completely through with rainwater. His head was covered by his navy hood, cape wrapped around his shoulders. The cliff was overlooking the Reservoir and the Divine Beast, which stood obvious and proud in the lake. It didn’t make a single sound except for a few creaks that caused great tide-like ripples in the water. The noiselessness was somewhat reminiscent of a beach, something Wolfie had only visited out of sheer curiosity as to what laid beyond the Gerudo Desert. 

Right in front of them lay Mount Lanayru, it’s daunting spire rising high into the air. There was a small cluster of clouds near the peak, not a familiar ring and plume like that of Death Mountain but rather like a horde of gnats clinging to a horse’s coat. Perhaps a blizzard. Even through the white storm, though, the great blue crystals surrounding the Spring at its apex made a recognizable silhouette. 

Link didn’t move when Wolfie approached from behind like he expected to, which told him that his ears were still struggling to catch up from his stunt on Shatterback Point. He did glance towards him when he brushed against the sleeve of the warm doublet he’d bought at Hateno, though. 

Dawn came with even more splendor than dusk, all pink and violet and it turned the cheerless grey of the rain golden. The sun took a great gasp and peered over the horizon just to the right of the mountain. It’s rays would’ve baked the stone in warmth had Vah Ruta’s storm not casted a shadow over the entirety of Lanayru Great Spring.

A hand bunched into Wolfie’s drenched midnight mane, drawing his attention away from the sunrise.  _ Look,  _ Link signed, pointing towards the sky above Mount Lanayru with his other hand. He let it stay in the air until he could feel Wolfie still under his fist.

A gaping, dark chasm opened in the sky, eerily similar to square portals and geometric patterns, but instead of shadow beasts from the yawning tear emerged a silver snakelike body adorned in glowing blue horns.

Naydra. 

She snaked herself around the peak of Mount Lanayru, and she was so gargantuan that Wolfie could see her toes rest on the crystals that encased the Spring and push off of them so she could soar down the mountain. Her body breached the clouds but didn’t disappear in them, rather she stretched them so thin as they clung to her scales like children to a mother’s sleeve that they disappeared. Leisurely, as the sun painted the sky a heavenly rose, she got closer and closer to Ruto Precipice. 

His tail hit the ground in the same predictable pattern he’d learned meant contentment.  _ Thump. Thump. Thump.  _ The thought that he should be scared–no, terrified–of the giant dragon heading right towards them never even touched his mind. He only felt a bottomless pit of awe. 

Naydra weaved in between the peaks of Ja’Abu Ridge and skimmed the water of the Reservoir. She disturbed nothing, not even the water moved when her claws dipped under its surface, but the Divine Beast’s rain did pause as if it too were watching a goddess pass by. 

With her came the blizzard, a gentle breeze that carried glittering snowflakes, and an undulation of the air that wasn’t quite like breathing nor like wind, but felt something akin to silent music. There was a tap, tap, tap that was reminiscent of piano keys, and Wolfie found his jaw clicking closed when she got so close that they could feel her thunderous heartbeat. Her very presence seemed larger than Hyrule itself. 

Her horns were like mountains themselves, towering gemstone pillars that grew from her scales as if it were the most natural thing. The pretty red glow of dawn passed through them and they scattered it, sending blue flecks of sunlight scattering onto Link’s cheeks and the Domain below them.

Her yellow eye was so big that Wolfie could stretch out on it like a bed, and he would still not cover the entire thing. Her sclera was light purple and the pupil was nothing but a tiny dot, and resting on her eyelids were fanning, furry eyelashes. A second, somewhat transparent eyelid clicked into place vertically as she stared at them, completely still. A dragon’s version of a blink. 

Wolfie heard nothing, but he knew she was speaking. Link’s hand was stony in his fur, though. 

Perhaps their language was something only the deaf could hear. 

The wild hero took a shuttering, deep breath. Wolfie could almost hear his ribs rattle in his chest. The exhale produced mist, and Naydra blinked that away with her whole eyelid this time. Her eyelashes nearly touched Link’s toes. 

With that, she let out a rumbling groan, and cascaded upwards. Her bright azure belly was an entrancing waterfall that threw Link’s hood off his head and Wolfie’s fur in his face. The boy extended a hand, as if he were really going to reach out and touch, but stilled. 

As she finally left, her tail lashed out and sheared a group of stone off the side of the cliff. She inhaled, as if surprised, and the cluster of jewels that ended her ribbonlike body flew past them. The sky opened again, and she disappeared in it with a stark nothingness that would’ve left Wolfie questioning if she really existed at all had not the tips of his fur been frosted and an entire surface of the bluff not been knocked into the Reservoir. 

Curious, Wolfie peered into the lake. He could see nothing except a small blue shard floating lazily on the surface. Even from so far up, it was unmistakable. It made the dark waters look like a night sky. Well, a night sky that had only one star and a hulking, corrupted, metal behemoth for a moon. 

Naydra had left them a scale in the Spring of Wisdom, something that melted into ordinary water the minute it was held up to Hylia’s light, but the fractured, tiny remains of one of her horns was still there. Perhaps more sturdy, more real. 

He looked back to Link, whose nose was red from the chill. He had a wide smile on his face that stretched the charred valleys in his skin, something the Domain had robbed him of. This free, wild sort of exhilarated grin that was so present when he found the perfect mountain to throw himself off of or a hidden Shrine or an ingredient at the peak of its ripeness. It was nice to see it again.

_ She eats sky?  _ His head tilted at Wolfie, eyes the same shade as Naydra’s jewels misted with dumb curiousity.  _ Must. She too big for real food.  _

Wolfie genuinely contemplated that for a second, but instead turned his own questions back on the red-cheeked hero.  _ What did she say to you?  _ Because she must’ve said something, and Wolfie wanted to know what something so ethereal had to say. He wanted to know if she sounded like Lanayru, like Ordona. 

It was times like these, though, he was painfully reminded of his dog tongue.

Hands rubbed together, staving off the nip of the chill, before marking out  _ hungry  _ simply in the air and snatching the Sheikah Slate from Wolfie’s jaws with a triumphant flourish.

All at once, the rain pounded into their skulls as if punishing Link for such a silly remark, but the weather’s reprimand only drew a laugh from both of them. The Divine Beast let out a cry, torrential streams spewing from its trunk, and lifted itself from where it was sinking in the Reservoir. 

The shard of horn grew only closer to the sapphire floors of the dock.

They had to wait for the rain to wane in order to pick down the side of the bluff. It lightened up a far greater amount than they anticipated; only a slight, pleasant drizzle as opposed to the constant downpour. The white dragon, though departed, seemed to tame Vah Ruta’s artificial weather even if the storm continued at its normal pace nearly a minute after paws and boots hit the edge of the Reservoir. 

Not once had Link’s ankle twisted when Wolfie helped him down, even if such an occurrence was commonplace while climbing in the rain. He considered it a silent blessing.

That thought was quickly banished when he realized just how flooded the lake really was. The surface of the water just barely covered the floor of the dock, only contained by the railing and leaving crystal with an almost coat of constant wet. The water went in and out like a tide, massive ripples caused by Ruta in its center. It was like a cruel sort of beach. 

Link didn’t pause to take in the severe state of overflow, gently getting to his knees to use his hands to fish out the dragon’s horn. It was hard to tell where the material of the floor ended and the endless depths of the Reservoir began, and he fumbled a couple times before Wolfie resolved himself to tugging on his hood so that he wouldn’t drown himself in the lake. 

Maybe he would get around to teaching him to swim properly, though he supposed he was partially responsible for the boy’s poor conduct in the water. He’d probably seen Wolfie’s puny little paddle and decided it was the most effective thing in the world.

_ It isn’t puny,  _ he corrected himself.  _ It’s a mighty doggy paddle.  _ Well, as mighty a doggy paddle could get in a Domain of fish people. 

Link managed to finally get a grasp on the thing, pulling it swiftly from the water and dropping it on the ground immediately when it was no longer over the lake. Wolfie’s ears flattened to the side of his skull at the sharp, bell-like chime that rang when it landed, dropping the cloth of his hood. Link’s only twitched, perhaps not fully comprehending the noise.

Link inspected his hand, and showed the palm to Wolfie with pursed lips. The leather was noticeably thinner, as if just touching the thing had chewed it through, and the skin that had actually touched it was bright red. Luckily it was fading fast.

The Sheikah Slate had been warm when Wolfie brought it to him, it wouldn’t have been if the hero didn’t take something out of it. Probably an elixir, a hearty one if the burns were healing so quickly. The zora didn’t have those, the monster parts required were too risky. 

Good, he’d be healed up in no time if only he’d rest. 

_ Hot,  _ he signed out, and then paused to think.  _ No. Very cold.  _ And, despite his observation, he reached again. Wolfie started to bat his hand away, but his fingers only flinched near the horn’s surface as if simply repelled rather than burned this time. Link pouted, trying again with no success. 

He huffed disappointedly, like a toddler who just realized that he couldn’t reach the top shelf.  _ You try.  _

Wolfie sent him an incredulous look.  _ Me? _

Link’s eyebrows went up, and he pointed at it once. Twice, when Wolfie’s brow furrowed.  _ You try.  _

Bending down to pick it up with his mouth felt like some strange sort of vertigo, and clamping his teeth around it was full of anticipation. He curled his tongue so that it wouldn’t get charred any more than the rest of his mouth, resigning himself to dealing with gross cold food, but no burning sensation came. It was just a smooth rock, indistinguishable from an opal or stray sapphire from an ore mine. Though maybe it did have a sweet taste to it, like someone had dipped it in sugared honey. 

Link’s eyes widened.  _ Why?  _ The word was offended, but his hands were excited. 

Wolfie glanced away, not really understanding himself. Hot wolf’s breath clouded the perfect clear of the crystal, and white vapor erupted from between his teeth. Indeed, it was still very cold, but not so cold that he couldn’t touch it.

A click, and then a shutter pulled him from his contemplation of the thing, eyes wide and ears pulled back. Link’s subsequent, wheezing laugh was hoarse and wet from behind the Sheikah Slate. He turned the tablet around to show Wolfie a picture of himself with a stupid, surprised look on his face. The shard was registered in the database in blue letters as  _ Naydra’s horn.  _

_ Warn me next time!  _ he admonished in his head, tail thrashing. Oh, that was going to come back later and bite him in the ass. A perfect bit of blackmail. 

Link turned the Slate back around and swiped up, presumably getting rid of the ridiculous image. His cheeks were full holding back laughter.  _ I will,  _ he signed with one hand, and then stopped abruptly in middle of the sign for  _ next.  _

The Sheikah Slate hit the floor with a thud, not quite the chime that Wolfie expected he recoiled in surprise, and looked up to see Link with his mouth open. Suddenly, an overjoyed expression flooded his face, even stronger than his grin while watching the dragon. His arm movements were wide and exaggerated, barely recognizable.  _ You talk? _

_ What? _

A little noise escaped the boy, hands clamped over his mouth. “This is so cool,” he whispered in his wrecked voice, maybe a little louder than intended. “Say something else.” 

_ How can you hear me? _

Wolf got no answer, only a harsh, suffocating hug.

The revelation would catch up to him later. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> information on black lives matter here: https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co  
watch this video (without skipping ads) to donate to blm if you can't pay directly: https://youtu.be/DAZgTNBLSLA
> 
> i hope this longer-ish chapter made up for the long wait, i should be getting them out more regularly. the start of july was hectic since i had a lot of other deadlines i needed to get done and unfortunately this was put on the backburner. 
> 
> NEXT chapter will be vah ruta. i have a lot of plans to change the waterblight fight, and i wanted mipha to have her own chapter amidst all the crazy setups im getting into. i love her

**Author's Note:**

> can u tell i really want the wolf link amiibo?


End file.
